


You Are My Strength

by ceterisparibus



Series: Ella [7]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Jessica Jones (TV), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Avocados at Law, Boom! You've been lawyered!, Catholicism, Character Death, Drugs, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everything's gonna be fine, F/M, Foggy Nelson Is a Good Bro, Food is a love language, Gratuitous non-wearing of glasses, Head Injury, Human Disaster Matt Murdock, Hurt/Comfort, I promise Jessica and Frank show up but it takes forever, Karen Page perseveres, Labradoodle!, Legal Drama, Martial Arts, Matt and Marci are salty bffs, Memory Loss, Pregnancy, Sorry guys, Therapy, Whump, bc I suck at estimating how many words it takes to say stuff, oh my gosh so much whump, too much research about random things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2019-12-31 23:10:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 58
Words: 280,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18323864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceterisparibus/pseuds/ceterisparibus
Summary: This fic deals with the inevitable fallout of "Fully Known." Nelson, Murdock, and Page scramble to play defense against whatever Fisk is planning.(*SPOILER ALERT* if you want a fic where Matt is on trial for being Daredevil, this may be the fic for you.)





	1. Everything I Love I Set Aflame

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, everyone! If you've read the rest of the Ella series, I love you. If you're jumping straight into this one (because you wanna read about Matt on trial? Yes? SAME), here are the most important facts to be aware of:
> 
> \- Matt and Foggy are bffs with seven-year-old Ella (they helped terminate the parental rights of her abusive parents so she could get adopted)  
> \- Foggy made Matt agree to a "Bad Decisions Spectrum" outlining which allegedly bad decisions Matt is allowed to make with varying levels of permission  
> \- Matt started training with one of Stick's old pupils, Stone, who taught Matt to use knives  
> \- Matt used those skills against Kyle Conway, Ella's biological dad, who unfortunately had hemophilia, which took his life  
> \- MATT GOT A FLUFFY FEMALE LABRADOODLE PUPPY NAMED FRANK  
> \- Foggy and Marci get engaged over Christmas <3  
> \- DA Tower charged Matt with Conway's murder and conspiracy, assuming that Matt-the-lawyer worked with Daredevil to kill Conway, but Matt got out of it (eventually) by arguing self-defense and just generally poking holes in Tower's case  
> \- Madam Gao let Dex out of prison hoping that he would take out Matt and Fisk, but instead Stone killed Gao and Dex is left to wreak havoc, only somewhat tempered by his decision to kidnap Sister Maggie and use her as a north star  
> \- Marci knows who Matt is, as does Micah, Ella's adoptive dad, who also adopts Matt kinda like you might adopt a stray cat  
> \- Vanessa released a fear-inducing hallucinogen (devil's hell) in Hell's Kitchen  
> \- Matt started teaching Ella self-defense per Micah's request; he also started teaching Spiderman because of course I have to write about Spiderman  
> \- Tired of the cat-and-mouse game, Vanessa called Karen to threaten Ella and Karen responded by showing up at Vanessa's gallery and shooting her  
> \- At the end of the last fic, Ella got dosed with devil's hell and Dex showed up to shoot Foggy, but Matt rescued Ella and Stone kidnapped Dex  
> \- Matt and Karen got married and he found out that she is pregnant
> 
> Okay, whew, I think that's everything important.
> 
> Chapter title from Appalachian Wine by Eleventyseven. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKND1oJ7cQ0)

Karen

It was a lazy Saturday, her favorite kind of morning. The kind of morning where the worst thing that could happen was that you might waste it if you didn’t relax enough. And Karen Murdock deserved a bit of relaxation.

(No. After what she’d done, she probably didn’t.)

But Foggy had already been released from the hospital, though he still griped about his gunshot wound at every opportunity. As for Peter, he apparently had ridiculous healing capabilities (and no, she was _not_ jealous that Matt didn’t have that and she did _not_ occasionally consider assaulting him with spiders on the off chance that one of them was just the right kind of radioactive). And Ella? She would bounce back from the damage done.

The damage was more psychological at this point, true, and Ella was so young. But bouncing back seemed to be her specialty. More importantly, she was surrounded by people who loved her enough to help her.

Speaking of love. Karen reached sleepily across the bed to Matt’s side. He liked to sleep with himself between her and the door, but this morning, she found his part of the bed empty and cold. She finally opened her eyes.

And there he was, kneeling beside the bed, fast asleep with one arm folded over the comforter and the other stretched out towards her. The sunlight from the window spilled into the room to bathe his head, which was nestled in the crook of his elbow.

It was a far more peaceful image than all the thoughts in her head.

Carefully, she sat up, wondering if she could take a picture without waking him. But he was still dressed as the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen from the previous night, swathed in shadows with the black mask crumpled on the floor beside him. She felt a stab of worry, but he didn’t seem newly injured. Sliding her legs off the edge of the bed, she stroked her hand through his hair until he stirred, his eyes slitting lazily open like a blissful cat.

“Good morning,” she whispered, tilting his head up towards her. “Did you mean to fall asleep beside the bed instead of in it?”

“…What?” he mumbled.

She moved her hand to his forehead and his eyes fluttered closed at her touch. He really was a cat. “Are you okay?” No sign of a fever, and maybe his paleness was just due to how poorly he’d slept, slumped over the bed like that.

“What? Yeah, m’fine. What…” His eyes snapped open again. “Karen.”

“That’s me, still here.” She slipped off the bed to sit on the floor beside him. “Did you get hit in the head last night or something? Let me look at your eyes.” She put her hand on his cheek. His pupils seemed a normal size, but now his eyes were wide and flitting around her. They kept dropping to her stomach, or maybe to the floor, then back up like he thought he could meet her gaze.

“No, I’m fine. I just…oh, God,” he mumbled.

She knew him well enough to know that those last words, cracking slightly, were closer to a prayer than a curse. “Talk to me.”

“Yeah, um, can I shower first?” His voice went up a bit at the end.

“Take your time,” she said carefully, well aware of the fact that he could hear how her heart had started hammering in her chest. The fact that he didn’t rush to reassure her left her even more unnerved.

He got up, but just stood in place for a second, tapping his fingers anxiously at his hips. Then he seemed to make up his mind about something. Ducking down, he pulled her to her feet and wrapped his arms around her.

“I love you,” he murmured.

She bit back the questions about what had prompted this. He’d tell her at some point. He always did, now, even if it took awhile sometimes. He’d even told her about the conversation at the restaurant where he’d shared the truth about Stick with Micah. (And she was so proud.)

“It was like he really cared,” Matt had said hesitantly.

Karen had smiled. “I’m pretty sure he does.”

Now she just told him she loved him back and gave him a little push towards the bathroom. She had a full day of work ahead of her, both in researching her own PI cases and for the side job that wasn’t really a side job: researching every report of anything that could possibly be traced back to Fisk. Starting with his new lawyer, a Mr. Adrian Lopez, partner at McCulloch, Drexel, and Lopez.

Lopez seemed clean. The whole firm seemed clean. They handled a mix of civil and criminal cases, although Lopez specialized in criminal cases. Go figure. But there was no record misconduct, ethics violations, or investigations of any kind. As for Lopez’s criminal clients, they all seemed to be guilty of minor offenses that had simply gotten blown out of proportion by trigger-happy prosecutors.

Fisk had to have something on the firm. If Karen could just figure out what it was and drag it out into the open, maybe that would be enough to derail whatever Fisk was planning.

Or maybe it wouldn’t. But it would sure make her feel better.

 

Matt

All right. Karen was pregnant. That was fine. That was…that was _great_. Terrible timing, but…great. Amazing. Kind of life-altering, but it was fine. They were gonna be fine.

Closing the door of the bathroom, he told himself he wasn’t hiding, just…regrouping. He turned on the faucet, then backed into the opposite corner of the room, fully clothed, feeling the reassuring solidity of the two walls on either side of him. He couldn’t hear the tiny heartbeat from here; it was too small, easily overwhelmed by just the sounds of the water falling. He could almost pretend it wasn’t there at all.

At least he’d have a couple of seconds alone here to wrap his head around this and process. Unless she decided to join him in the shower. Speaking of which, when could this have _happened?_ The last time they’d even gotten close to sex had been at the gym right before Dex called to threaten Ella. He’d made a point to avoid it after that because he couldn’t risk…couldn’t risk exactly what was happening right now.

Steam filled the bathroom and he itched to pace. Couldn’t slow down his racing brain long enough to _think_. He knew himself well enough to know that this was the point where he needed to go _do_ something—punch something, punch someone—until he could…not calm down, no, but at least get a grip on himself.

But he didn’t dare leave this apartment.

Any hatred Fisk felt towards Matt Murdock shrank in comparison to what he felt towards Karen Page, the woman who’d murdered both James Wesley and Vanessa. Except she wasn’t Karen Page anymore, she was Karen Murdock and she…she didn’t deserve this.

And the kid? That tiny little life that was a target just by existing inside her while she bore his name?

How could he have been stupid, careless (selfish) enough to let this happen?

He remembered the little boy, kidnapped by Russians to draw him into a trap. He remembered Ella, frozen in terror from hallucinogenic nightmares induced not because she somehow asked for it but just to convince Matt to back off. Two children hurt for no reason other than to get to Matt. If Fisk found out Karen was pregnant, it wouldn’t slow him down. He’d probably…he’d probably see it as _convenient_ now that Matt and Karen were so much easier to hurt. Was any amount of joy worth this kind of suffocating panic?

This was exactly what Stick always warned him about. _You have people you care about? Cut ’em lose, for their sake. Or else they will suffer._

What made him think he could keep Karen safe through this? And this…this wouldn’t end in nine months. This child would be a target for the rest of Matt’s life.

_In the end, you’ll kill her too._

Squeezing his eyes shut, Matt sank down to the floor. How the _hell_ was he supposed to fix this?

_God, stop. Just stop it. This isn’t fair. Not to them._

_Why? What did I do to You?_

He drew in a deep breath.

_God, I’m so scared._

 

Foggy

So the thing with bullet wounds was that unless the bullet hit a bunch of vital organs or broke a bone, the doctors actually tended to kick you out of the hospital pretty fast. Which did not, contrary to what some might think, mean that the victim was back to his old, pain-free self.

For once, however, Foggy was not really complaining about the pain, since it provided a pretty compelling distraction from thinking about the mess his life had become since Karen killed Vanessa Fisk.

Wait, what as that? Sorry, since Karen _murdered_ Vanessa Fisk.

Foggy glanced up from his work. Nelson, Murdock, and Page was camped out in a study room at the public library—not far from where Matt proposed to Karen, which was endlessly weird. The three of them taped a “Closed for Repairs” sign at the door of the actual office, wrote their respective phone numbers underneath, and started a new tradition of moving into a new makeshift office every other day or so. They’d had to leave behind most of Matt’s equipment, which definitely lowered his work productivity, but he made up for it by, you know, keeping them alive.

See, Matt was freaking out, albeit understandably, about everyone close to either him or Karen finding themselves in mortal peril. Part of Foggy, a part of Foggy that was bigger than he liked to admit, appreciated this. Keeping people alive was kind of Matt’s specialty. Besides, for all that Foggy had managed to survive Wilson Fisk’s escape from prison, he knew he owed the genius of the hide-in-plain-sight strategy to Marci and, besides, he was pretty sure that strategy wouldn’t work now that Fisk had nothing to live for.

(Foggy was holding out hope that maybe in prison Fisk _had_ found something to live for. A new buddy, or hobby, or maybe he found religion or something. But he kept that hope to himself because Matt calling him naïve had been bad enough the first time.)

A larger part of Foggy was frustrated because thinking about two things at once wasn’t Matt’s best strength, which meant that as long as Matt was focusing on survival, he _wasn’t_ focusing on the morality of murder. Which felt strangely like being let down because Foggy had apparently been subconsciously counting on Matt to take his usual black-and-white views on killing. Then Foggy would automatically soften his own approach just to balance things out for Karen's sake, which could potentially have the happy side effect of Foggy convincing himself that, really, the whole thing wasn't that bad.

That wasn’t happening.

Instead, Foggy was trying to concentrate on work and failing miserably. Every time he looked up, he saw Karen on his right and Matt on his left, both less than two feet away at the tiny table. Karen was a murderer twice over and Matt was basically a ghost and Foggy was normally pretty good at holding the three of them together through whatever crisis they faced, but this?

This was a little something else.

He rubbed at his forehead. Karen looked intensely focused, staring down her laptop screen like it had issued her a personal challenge. Matt was sitting with his earbuds in, but Foggy wouldn’t be surprised to discover that his audio was paused or muted with the way his head kept twitching subtly as he tried to track the world outside the study room.

At least they were together in one place. That had to count for something.

Still, the work hours dredged by and Foggy wasn’t sure he could recount what he’d actually accomplished by the time he suggested they call it a day. The words were barely out of Foggy’s mouth when Matt was on his feet, stuffing his laptop into a bag. So, yeah, Foggy’s theory that Matt hadn’t been working at all seemed pretty solid, since usually Matt would insist on getting through just one more paragraph, or two, or three. By the time Karen looked up, Matt was already standing in front of the door. Listening.

“Think we’re good,” he reported, almost under his breath, like he hadn’t meant for Foggy or Karen to hear it. He reached for the knob.

“Hang on.” Foggy grabbed his arm. “What about the we-love-each-other meeting?”

Karen stilled in the middle of packing up her things. She looked up with a shy smile. “That’s still not what it’s called.”

Matt’s hand slowly fell back to his side. “Been a while, hasn’t it?” he murmured noncommittally.

He was right. They certainly hadn’t been all in one place long enough to think to have one since Vanessa’s murder. Even during Peter’s arrest, they’d been too removed from one another, all tracking different leads or dealing with devil’s hell.

Foggy nudged him, and tried not to worry when Matt didn’t reciprocate. “Don’t tell me you forgot how it works.”

Karen frowned. “But we don’t have the talking ball.”

Well, a conspicuously absent hacky sack was not going to ruin this moment. “We don’t need it.”

Karen looked like he’d announced that he wanted to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without the bread. “Foggy, the talking ball was _your_ rule.”

“Talking pen?” he suggested, picking up one such writing utensils from the table. When no one objected to his resourcefulness, he gave it a dramatic click. “Okay. I officially finished that motion to suppress evidence for the Hamdi case, so unless either of you want to look it over, my next steps are filing the motion and laughing maniacally when they try to wedge the police officers’ behavior into one of the exceptions to the fourth amendment.”

“They could make a case for exigent circumstances, couldn’t they?” Karen asked.

Yeah, she was basically a paralegal at this point. “A dumb case,” Foggy conceded intelligently. He threw the pen at her.

“I need to do a bit more research for my asset search for one of my clients, but I think I’ve got it mostly nailed down. And then, um—” She shot a nervous glance at Matt. “I’m trying to look into more of Lopez’s other cases besides Fisk’s.”

“Anything good?” Foggy asked warily.

She shook her head, eyes hardening. “But I’ll find something.” Then she threw the pen at Matt.

It hit him square in the face. His head jerked backwards like he’d been _genuinely surprised_ and there was a flash of anger in his eyes before he blinked it away. Foggy’s heart sank with the realization that Matt might’ve been in the room with them, but he hadn’t been _with_ them.

“Next steps, buddy,” Foggy said quietly. “That rule was your idea.”

Matt gave a tight nod. “Yeah. I need to look through more case law.”

Probably the most banal answer he could’ve given. “Any specific case law?” Foggy prompted.

“For the third element of the second count,” he answered so swiftly that Foggy was pretty sure he’d made it up on the spot.

Foggy wanted to ask him which of their cases he was even referring to, but that felt petty when he knew now that Matt had no idea.

“Karen?” Matt tilted his head towards her. “You ready?”

“Um, yeah.” She tightened her grip on her bag, no doubt bracing herself for whatever sort of not-quite-parkour route Matt had in mind to get them back to their apartment. “See you tomorrow, Foggy.”

Cracking the door open, Matt waited for a fraction of a second before pulling Karen through. They disappeared immediately into the rows of books.

“Bye,” Foggy said heavily, rubbing at the bullet wound under his shirt and trying not to think about the fact that, sure, Foggy hadn’t been in the hospital very _long_ , but Matt still could’ve visited. Just once.

 

They next day, Matt didn’t come in to work at all. Said he had something to take care of, didn’t elaborate. Neither Foggy nor Karen wanted to push him on it (yet) so they decided to make the most of the chance to work out of Nelson’s Meats for once.

Matt thought it was too dangerous. Foggy pointed out that at least if they died, they’d die surrounding by delicious meats and cheeses. Matt was not impressed.

“Maybe Fisk will think we _won’t_ be here because he thinks we’d never endanger your family like that,” Karen pointed out suddenly, looking up from her work like she’d noticed the way Foggy kept glancing towards the door like he expected an attack.

“In other words, we’re counting on Fisk thinking we’re not stupid enough to do something stupid?” Foggy asked, just to highlight the fact that _they had no idea what they were doing_.

Maybe Matt was right to be unimpressed.

Sighing, Karen swept her hair out of her face. “So, anyway, I was thinking about the Myers case. I still can’t find the defendant, and I was wondering how expensive it would be to hire someone else to track him down for us?”

“A service provider?” Foggy considered it. “Depends.”

“What about Jessica Jones?” Karen’s blue eyes were suddenly piercing. “She’s definitely effective. Is she expensive?”

“I know her alcohol preferences,” Foggy said thoughtfully. “Plus, we can always loan Matt out. I’m sure his supersenses would be pretty useful for a private investigator.”

Karen nodded, but something in her expression told Foggy that she was thinking of multiple ways to use that information.

He leaned closer. “What’re you scheming about over there?”

She pressed her lips together, then scowled. “I can’t find what I’m looking for,” she admitted begrudgingly.

“Which is?”

“Stuff on Fisk. His lawyers. Anything. Just…” She ran her hands through her hair. “Just _something_ , so we can get an idea of what he’s doing.”

“Hey.” Foggy put his hand over her arm. “We’ll figure it out. We’ve already beat him twice, right? Plus, it seems like you and Matt are both forgetting a crucial factor in our favor: this time, we have a _labradoodle_ on our side.”

Her smile was reluctant. “Are you thinking of using her as an attack dog?”

“What?” he squawked. “How dare you even _suggest_ that. She’s too small and innocent. No, Karen, I’m planning on spamming Fisk with pictures of her sweet, sweet puppy face. He’ll melt in a heartbeat.” Ah, yes, and Karen was melting too, her smile becoming less reluctant. Encouraged, Foggy kept going. “He’ll probably set up a puppy charity with whatever’s left of his funds. Adopt ten beagles of his own just to keep them off the streets. In fact—” He broke off when she stiffened, all his work clearly undone as her face paled. “Karen?”

She jumped to her feet to stare, lips parted, at the TV in the corner behind the counter.

Twisting in his chair, he followed her gaze and couldn’t see anything worth freaking out over. “What’s wrong?”

“Why are they showing this?” she whispered.

Foggy studied the screen. There was an image of a man with glasses who looked vaguely familiar (in a strangely disturbing way). The caption read: _Hell’s Kitchen Lost Another Hero: Recognizing the Man Who Unified Us_. “Who’s that? I mean, I don’t feel like I’ve been very unified in recent memory…”

She took another step closer to the TV, as if mesmerized. “That’s James Wesley.”

A chill raced down his spine as he fit the face with the name. He cleared his throat. “Well, I still don’t feel like he unified us, unless they’re counting how he unified a bunch of different criminal groups.”

“Why are they talking about him?” Spinning on her heel, she swiped up her stuff and grabbed her phone. “I’m calling Ellison.”

“Wait, Karen, calm down. This probably isn’t that big of a—”

She whipped back around. “They never solved his murder,” she hissed. “You really think it’s an accident that all of a sudden the news is drawing attention to him? And….and spinning it like this? No one but Fisk would say he unified us!”

“Whoa,” Foggy cautioned, putting his hand on her arm again. “Don’t jump straight to worst-case scenarios here, that’s my job. Maybe Wesley’s mom sponsored this because she thought he deserved a better eulogy than whatever he got.”

She jerked free. “If that’s true, Ellison can tell me.”

And with that, she was gone, the door swinging shut behind her. Shifting his weight uncertainly, Foggy looked back up at the TV. “Hey, Ma?” He called. “You got the remote?”

She bustled out of the kitchen to hand it to him. “Why, what’s on?”

He turned up the volume and gave her a few minutes to listen to the perky voice explaining how Wesley had almost single-handedly organized various events that drew attention to prevailing problems plaguing Hell’s Kitchen and fundraised to support solutions. “We are aware, of course,” the reporter went on, “of Wesley’s alleged connections to Wilson Fisk. However, more investigation is needed to determine exactly how close that connection was. In the meantime, we might still be able to find it within ourselves to appreciate the investment Wesley made in our community in the wake of the Incident up until his as-yet-unsolved murder.”

Foggy nudged Anna. “What do you think, Ma?”

She nodded her chin at Wesley’s picture. “Of him? Who is he? Was he really working with Fisk?”

Unable to bring himself to lie, Foggy didn’t answer directly. “They said they need to investigate more.”

She hummed. “Well, I hope he wasn't. And if he actually was doing so much good, I guess it’s unfortunate we lost him.”

“Yeah,” Foggy said weakly. “Unfortunate.”


	2. I'm Tripping Over My Pride

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Chasing the Wind" by Wolves at the Gate. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4hloUfehzo)

Matt

Devil’s hell didn’t go away just because Vanessa was no longer alive to distribute it, and just because Matt was straining to catch any hint of Fisk’s activities didn’t mean he could ignore other people who were hurt. He’d heard rumors that loads of the drug were being driven out of hell’s kitchen, and obviously he couldn’t just let that happen. So he called in an anonymous tip urging the police to set up a checkpoint, and then he positioned himself a few blocks down in case the police missed anyone.

Which they did.

Two hours later, his ears were still ringing from gunfire, his whole right side was bruised from when he’d kind of fallen into a windshield, and there was a knife in his left leg. Nice. He’d stopped the drugs, though, and the officers who’d shown up to collect the criminals had been appropriately chagrined. They hadn’t even tried to catch Matt, even though the knife wound meant they probably could’ve. Professional courtesy, maybe.

At least the blade wasn’t in too deep. He opted to leave it in place rather than pull it out and invite a heavier blood flow. Though he intended to head home, his feet somehow took him to the Valliers’ house where the aroma of their dinner still hung in the air. Maeva reached out yesterday to invite Matt and Karen over to share. Karen had wanted to go, but Matt had imagined sitting through a dinner styled after the American dream, listening to Ella chatter about school, hearing Micah’s smile every time he talked to her. Matt didn’t deserve to share in any part of that peace after what happened to Ella because of him. Forget deserving, he wouldn’t be _able_ to share in it until he removed the threat that still hung over them.

“You can go,” he’d told Karen.

“Not without you,” she’d argued.

Well, they were both equally stubborn. He didn’t go, and she didn’t go without him. Instead, she sat very pointedly in the middle of the living room, listening to her favorite music that was as jarring and discordant as an arcade, using headphones that allowed every shrill chord to leak out into the room. They probably should’ve given communication another shot, but it seemed easier at the time to just take off earlier than usual to patrol.

So now Matt stood in the Valliers’ backyard. They didn’t know how to stitch, but they had improved their first aid kit. If Matt tapped on the window, they’d let him in and give him something warm to drink while he stitched his leg up himself. He’d listen to Ella’s voice and they’d try to give him leftovers no matter how much he insisted that his rooftop routes were more difficult when he was laden down with Tupperware. (Plus, he had an image to maintain.)

Instead, he waited with his eyes closed, breathing in the scents and telling himself he could feel the warmth of the home even from a distance.

All right, enough wasting time. He started limping home, pretending his progress wasn’t slower than usual. He could practically hear Claire’s voice in his head, telling him to get body armor. Well, that wasn’t exactly easy to come by.

By the time he got home, he felt a bit dizzy. It was a blessed relief to finally get the knife out and close the wound. For a moment, Matt just stayed on the couch, head lolled against the back. He’d fall asleep right there except that his reckless disregard for his own well-being didn’t extend to neck pain. He cleared away the first aid kit, shuffled into the kitchen for kale (Karen kept them stocked up, insisted it helped with blood loss), and got ready for bed, trying not to count how many hours of sleep he’d get if he fell asleep at exactly that second.

Finally, he slipped into bed beside Karen, flat on his back as though staring at the ceiling. She wriggled closer in her sleep, drawn to his warmth or something. Feeling her rest her chin against his shoulder, he wished he could be as relaxed as she was.

Impossible. The tiny heartbeat was too fast and so loud it seemed impossible she couldn’t hear it.

But distracting though it was, the heartbeat wasn’t such a bad thing in and of itself. It was…it was nothing short of miraculous, was what it was. And he couldn’t quite believe he got to hear it. Lying here beside her, listening to that tiny, insistent sound, knowing that he was the only person on earth even aware of its significance…he felt strangely humbled.

And he just wanted to be excited.

Slowly, he moved his hand until he could rest it against her belly. He couldn’t feel anything, but he felt better, somehow—calmer—with his hand placed protectively over her. Them.

For one moment, he let himself forget about Fisk, Vanessa, Dex, all of it. He let himself imagine a future without their threats. A daughter or a son? What hints would there be of Karen’s personality, or Jack’s or Maggie’s, or—bless the poor kid—Matt’s? He thought about birthday parties and favorite subjects in school and…oh, there’d be _friends_. Matt wasn’t sure he was prepared for multiple kids running around, even if most of them belonged to other people.

And there’d be so many firsts. First time tying shoes, first time riding a bike, first mass, first words.

He swallowed thickly.

First time Matt was called _Dad_.

Slow down.

 

Matt jerked awake with the realization that it was…late. The talking alarm clock loudly informed him that it was after nine in the morning. Letting out a groan, he stretched his hand towards Karen’s part of the bed, though he already knew she’d not only left the bedroom but left the apartment.

Well, at least one of them was on time.

Something wet was touching his leg. Matt jerked upright with a hiss of disgust to realize Frank was licking at the wound. “Frank, stop, cut it out.” He nudged her with his toe, but she took that as an invitation to jump onto the bed, slobbering his face. He groaned again. “Gross, Frank. Why are you like this?”

She didn’t have an answer, just ran her tongue across his nose. She was probably the one entity that was having more fun in the wake of Vanessa’s death, since Matt had been able to bring her along more than once when Nelson, Murdock, and Page met up somewhere besides the office. Scratching her behind her ears, he tried to remember if they were still having office hours at the public library or if they’d moved elsewhere.

As if on cue, his phone started chanting Foggy’s name. Matt fumbled to answer. “Foggy?”

“Are you dying?”

“No?” Matt guessed.

“Karen said you were bleeding this morning.”

“Ah.” Traitor. “Just a knife wound, nothing to worry about.”

“Those two phrases are literally contradictory. You know that, right?” Foggy snorted. “Who am I kidding. You don’t know that.”

Matt rolled his eyes, aware that insisting that it was _just_ a stab wound would certainly not help his case.

“You coming into work at all today?”

“Yeah.” Matt got up and headed for his wardrobe. “On my way.”

“I mean, are you actually planning on working?”

Matt paused. “What does that mean?”

“I’m not an idiot, Matt. I know you weren’t paying attention yesterday. Which…that’s _fine_ , I guess. None of us are at our best right now, and if you feel like you need to listen to a thousand things at once, I get it. Just…let me know if that’s what’s happening, and I’ll try to do more of the work.”

Matt’s chest tightened guiltily. “That’s not—I wasn’t—”

“Save it. You don’t have to do everything. We’re still partners.” He hesitated. There was a shuffling sound over the phone like he was walking away, maybe getting some distance from Karen. He lowered his voice. “You weren’t doing this right after Vanessa was killed. Did something else happen? Is that why you’re so freaked out?”

“I’m not freaked out.” Lie. “I’m just—”

“Remember when we wrote the list?” Foggy interrupted. The Bad Decision Spectrum?”

“You tried to stop me from getting a dog. I hope you remember that.”

Foggy didn’t rise to the needling. “There were three things you weren’t allowed to do ever, under any circumstances.”

Matt grabbed the first suit he touched and tossed it on the bed. “Yeah, and you keep adding to it. It’s getting hard to track.”

“Stop that,” Foggy said.

Rueful, Matt fell silent.

Foggy audibly took a deep breath, probably gathering his patience. “Do you remember the first thing I put on that list? The _first thing_ you’re not allowed to do?”

Matt shrugged helplessly, letting his silence speak for itself.

“Of course you don’t,” Foggy muttered, and the bitterness in his voice was a shock. “Let me remind you, then. You’re not allowed, under any circumstances, to pull away from the people who care about you. Specifically Karen, me, and Maggie.”

“I’m not,” Matt said flatly. “Doing that. I’m not.”

Foggy sighed. “What don’t I know?”

“What?” Matt snapped.

“There’s something, right? There’s always some mysterious thing that justifies you pulling away, and as long as you don’t tell anyone about that thing, you never have to hear the voice of reason telling you that the justification is dumb.”

The denial rose automatically to Matt’s lips. But there was such weary resignation in Foggy’s voice which Matt hated to know he’d put there, and…and he’d gotten better at evading without lying. “I’m sorry.”

There was a startled silence. Then: “You’re sorry? Wait, does that mean I’m right?”

“There is something,” Matt admitted, and even though Foggy had no idea what he was talking about, confirming the reality of that little heartbeat aloud triggered such a rush of clashing emotions that Matt had to skim his fingers against the wall to steady himself.

Foggy waited, silent and expectant. Then: “And you’re not gonna tell me.”

“I _will_. I just…I just can’t.” Matt clenched his jaw. “I _should_ tell you. I just…can’t. Yet.”

“You know that doesn’t really help.”

“I know,” Matt said quietly. “I don’t know what else to say. I’m just trying to keep this together.”

“Yeah, and you’re not the only one who cares about whether any of us live or die!” Foggy’s voice rose. “All right, _fine_ , maybe if Fisk unleashed actual ninjas against you and Karen and me, you’d be the one doing most of the work to protect us. But if Fisk tries to tear down your name like when he named you as an accomplice, I’ll be every bit as useful as you and you know it.”

“I’m not saying I think I’m more useful.”

“Maybe not in so many words.”

That wasn’t what Matt thought at all. But Foggy didn’t know about Karen, which meant the best plans he could come up with would be incomplete.

The solution, then, was to tell Foggy. Give him all the facts to work with so he could come up with something. But how would that confession go? _The thing is, Foggy, I was careless enough to get our best friend pregnant right at the time when Fisk hates her the most. Sorry._ Matt didn’t want to hear his own anger and fear reflected back from Foggy. Maybe it was illogical, but Matt so badly wanted the moment when he told Foggy to be happy. For now, it was easier to not say anything.

“Just let me help.” Foggy’s voice was soft again, almost pleading. “You do realize I _can_ be helpful, right?”

Not with this.

Foggy sighed into the phone again. “Fine. You don’t have to come in today if it’s gonna drive you crazy.”

“I have to—”

“You _don’t_ have to keep us safe. We’ll be fine for eight hours. Go do recon or something while we get some actual work done for our clients. Trust us to take care of ourselves.” He hesitated, like he knew that was too much to ask. “Or…try to trust us.”

Still easier said than done.

 

Dex

The wound in his side burned, but he was free. The apartment was barren and cold, but there were no bars on the window. The strange man sitting lazily in front of him was the same one who’d slipped a blade between Dex’s ribs, but there were no handcuffs clipped to his belt. And Vanessa was gone, but the silver lining was that she couldn’t leave him twice.

The stranger threw something at Dex. “Eat.”

Dex flinched when the protein bar hit him in the chest, sending more fire along the site of his stitches. Unwrapping the plastic, he wolfed it down in two bites. Peanut butter that actually tasted almost like peanut butter. Next, the stranger handed him a bottle of water, which Dex drained. The entire time, the stranger just watched. Silence stretched on. A fly buzzed in the window.

Dex crumpled up the protein bar wrapping. “Is this some sort of game?”

The stranger shook his head.

“You planning on sending me back to prison?”

“I might.”

Dex stiffened, gut churning. “Don’t. I didn’t—I didn’t do anything wrong.”

The stranger actually laughed. “I can’t tell if you believe that.”

Dex didn’t know either.

The next second, the stranger got to his feet so suddenly that Dex shrank back. “Well, come on. To your feet, Dex.”

“You know my name?”

The stranger held out his hand. “Yes, but I won’t hold it against you. Call me Stone.”

What was happening right now? Regarding the hand warily, Dex pushed himself into a standing position on his own, painfully aware of the lack of pressure in his back where he was used to having a pistol secured in his belt. “Where’d you put my stuff?”

“Follow me.” The stranger—Stone—headed for the door.

Dex didn’t budge. “Where’s my stuff?”

“It’s safe. You’ll get it back once you’ve earned it.”

Dex wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He was sick of earning people’s approval. But Stone seemed nothing like anyone he’d ever met before. Maybe it would be different. Or maybe Dex would just steal his stuff back. Or hold one of Stone’s own knives to his throat until he surrendered.

“Calm down,” Stone said dismissively, yanking the door open. “You first.” But as Dex stepped across the threshold, Stone leaned close enough that Dex could feel his breath on the back of his neck. “I realize we’ll be out among civilians, but if you try anything I don’t like, I will not hesitate to stab you again. Or…” He tapped his fingers against the stitching. “Or maybe I’ll just rip these out.”

“What do you want me to do?” Dex shot back. “Twiddle my thumbs and whistle?”

“Follow me and keep your head down.” Stone pushed Dex through the doorway and slid past him, leading the way down an unsteady and poorly-lit stairway that smelled like weed.

Stepping outside was like climbing out of a cave. Dex stopped short, tilted his head back, and breathed in deep gulps of air with his eyes fixed on the clear blue sky. There were no clouds. Some buildings jabbed into the blue, but if Dex tilted his head back far enough, it got to the point where all he could see was blue, blue, filling up his vision, making him feel small and free. Dex wasn’t sure how long he stood there. Abruptly, he remembered that he wasn’t alone. He looked around to see Stone standing there, arms folded, black eyes studying him.

“What?” Dex demanded. “I’m just following you.”

Shrugging, Stone turned around and started walking off down the sidewalk with the air of a man who thought he belonged among civilians. He didn’t, though. It was obvious to anyone with military or law enforcement experience: Stone carried himself like a combatant. Dex just wasn’t sure if Stone saw his role as that of protector or attacker.

Dex also wasn’t sure why Stone thought he had control of the situation. Sure, Dex didn’t have his weapons. But Dex didn’t need his guns. He glanced around as they walked. It was a worn-out part of town and eventually they passed a building that was breaking apart. Chunks of cement cluttered the sidewalk, several of which would fit perfectly in Dex’s hand. He narrowed his eyes at the back of Stone’s head, saw two chunks within arm’s length, and reached to snag them.

But Stone’s hand clasped around the back of Dex’s neck, fingers digging into pressure points. Dex froze.

“If you want to make a scene,” Stone murmured in his ear, “go right ahead. I can get out of here dragging your corpse with me long before the police arrive.” He tightened his fingers.

To his shame, Dex whimpered.

Stone relaxed his grip. “That’s…what do you call it? Strike one?”

Dex rubbed the back of his neck. “I get it.”

“No, you don’t,” Stone said thoughtfully. “But you will. Let’s move.”

Dex fell into position after him. Even though Dex was obviously a captive, he wasn’t all that annoyed by it. For whatever reason, Stone didn’t seem interested in killing him. Maybe that would change if Dex pushed it, but that left plenty of wiggle room for Dex to try something else. It almost felt like a game. One that Stone probably did not realize he was playing, but still.

What would Stone do if Dex got ahold of a civilian? Would Stone stab them both? Risk creating a scene? Risk witnesses? There was a woman passing by, a mother pushing a stroller. Seemed good. Dex shifted in her direction, only to freeze as Stone whirled around, one arm slung casually over Dex’s shoulders, the other hand touching a knife to the exact spot where the stitches were holding his skin together.

No one noticed. Cursing New Yorkers and their self-absorption, Dex forced himself to stand at ease until Stone flashed him an approving look and pushed him forward.

After about five minutes, Stone turned down an alley. “This way,” he murmured.

“How do you _know_?” Dex grumbled, because it sure seemed like Stone was taking a random path.

Stone stopped. Slowly, he turned until he could meet Dex’s eyes. “Scent.”

Dex frowned. “What?”

“Scent. I found our prey’s last known address from the public records of his arrest. Now it’s merely a matter of catching his scent. Which I have.” Stone stepped closer, his voice taking on a mocking tone. “Why, can’t you smell him?”

“You’re enhanced,” Dex breathed. “Like…like Captain America or something.”

A creepy smile curved his mouth. “Something like that. How else have I been able to stop you from escaping me? I can smell your sweat, smell your adrenaline spike. I can hear your feet shift even when I can’t see it. And I can hear your heartbeat.”

Dex put a hand over his chest like that would muffle it. “What happened to you?”

Stone’s eyes hardened. “Not what. Who. Come on.”

The alley was a sketchy place. Dex couldn’t help wondering how many times Daredevil—the real Daredevil—had to rescue someone from a place like this. Then he wondered what would’ve happened if Dex had gotten ahold of a Daredevil suit _without_ Fisk’s help. Maybe they could have teamed up.

“Are you teamed up?” Dex asked.

“Am I supposed to know what you’re talking about?” Stone drawled.

“Daredevil. You showed up to rescue his friend. Is that because you’re working with him?” Dex hadn’t heard anything about that, but he hadn’t really been paying attention to current events in Hell’s Kitchen.

“Some could construe it that way.”

That wasn’t an answer. Dex opened his mouth, but Stone held up his fist as he slunk against the wall of the alley, running a hand along the grimy surface. He must’ve found whatever he was looking for, because suddenly he wedged his shoulder against the wall. A door-shaped portion popped inwards.

A secret door? This day just kept getting better.

Stone stepped into the shadows. Normally, Dex would instinctively wait at the threshold to make sure the room was clear. But if it was true that Stone could hear heartbeats, and Stone thought the shadows were safe to enter, Dex decided to play along.

The room they entered was dark. There was a single window high against the wall straight above their heads, tucked right under the ceiling, and it was so dirty that barely any light got in. When Stone slid the secret door closed again, they were left in almost complete blackness.

Blinking, Dex waited for his eyes to adjust while Stone sat down in the middle of the room, cross-legged like he was meditating or something. The room was lined with…work benches. Tools. Equipment. What was this, a repair shop? No sign of anything that needed repairing, though.

Dex noted a heavy wrench within reach. He didn’t try to pick it up and use it, though, even though he was mostly sure that he was far enough away from Stone to grab it before Stone realized. But he was curious now. “What’re we waiting for?”

“Not what,” Stone said again. “Who. A Mr. Melvin Potter.”

 

Matt

Right, so he was supposed to be doing recon or something. And all right, it was true that hanging around the seedier parts of town was on Matt’s to-do list. Even in daylight, he might hear something useful if he just lurked long enough.

First, though. He needed professional help, and Foggy had given him the perfect excuse to skip work.

“How’s Ella doing?” Maggie asked, pretending to lead him as they walked around the block at the church. No particular path, no urgent destination.

“She’s fine.” He was pretty sure. “Thank you again for taking care of her.”

“I’m just glad we were in time.”

“What about you? How’s things?”

“Things,” she said dryly. “Things are good. Well, there was an argument over what color to repaint the nursery. Some of us think yellow would be a happy color, but Sister Emily keeps insisting that yellow can agitate babies if it’s too bright, so nothing’s been settled yet.” She snorted. “Sometimes I think Christian unity only goes so far. What’s your opinion?”

“I think it sounds like yellow is agitating the nuns more than the babies.”

She laughed. “I’ll be sure to tell them.”

Speaking of babies, though. He cleared his throat, tightening his hold on her arm before he caught himself and loosened his grip. “Mom, do you remember when you talked to me about how to rejoice when something is actually wrong?”

“Philippians?”

She’d said that rejoicing wasn’t a feeling, but a command to look for evidence of God’s goodness and lean into it. “How…how do you do that when the evidence of God’s goodness is the problem?”

“Hmm?” She sounded surprised. “Are you so sure that it is?”

“Pretty sure,” he muttered.

“I might need a little more context.”

Well, that was what he’d come for, right? “Fisk hates me, Mom, and he hates Karen. When he finds out Karen killed Vanessa, he’ll lose his mind. He’ll stop at nothing to…to…” He clenched his jaw. “Karen’s pregnant.”

“Oh,” she said softly.

He waited, but she didn’t say or do anything else. So he remained quiet, giving her time to work through this bombshell. But the longer she waited in silence, the more he tried to guess what she was thinking, which meant he was just recycling his own fears through his head. “Mom,” he said to interrupt himself, “she doesn’t know.”

Maggie inhaled. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I…she didn’t tell me. I found out for myself.”

She gave a very small, breathless laugh. “Oh, honey. And you panicked.”

He couldn’t really argue the point.

“How did you find out?”

“The, um…I heard the heart beating.”

“Six weeks,” she murmured. “She’s six weeks pregnant.”

Six…six? He’d been a father for six weeks and had no idea. “What do I do?”

“You celebrate,” she said.

She of all people should understand that it wasn’t that simple. “I don’t think I can.”

“Isn’t this worth celebrating?”

“Mom. He’s gonna kill her.” He closed his eyes. “He’s gonna kill both of them.”

“Fisk is in prison,” she said slowly.

“That’s never stopped him before, and this time, he won’t care about his personal reputation or saving his resources for some future plan to take over Hell’s Kitchen. He’ll leverage everything he has against us.”

“Don’t you have that friend on the force?”

“What friend?” Matt asked blankly.

“I guess he’s Foggy’s friend, isn’t he?”

Matt pressed his lips together. “Brett. He’s a good detective, but he’s just one guy.”

“So are you.”

She was definitely not soothing his anxiety. But he trusted that she had some kind of point to make, if he was just patient enough.

“Brett could help, couldn’t he?” she pressed. “If he knew the threat? Isn’t that his job?”

Matt stifled a defeated sigh. “Sure, yeah. I guess.”

“And Stone is still in the area. Wasn’t he there to protect Foggy?”

“I haven’t talked with him since, I don’t—”

“But you _could_ talk to him,” she cut in. “He could protect Karen like he protected Foggy.”

Maybe. If Stone was willing to knowingly put his life on the line for her sake. If Stone was even capable of fending off whatever attack Fisk staged. If Karen even agreed to have a bodyguard.

“But you said it wasn’t just Stone who kept Foggy safe. Wasn’t Spiderman there, too?”

“I’m not dragging a kid into this,” Matt growled.

She backed off. “But can’t you find some encouragement in knowing that you have people who can help?”

Technically, yes, maybe. But it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t nearly enough. Relying on Brett or Stone or anyone introduced too much uncertainty. What happened when Brett made a mistake? When Stone decided it wasn’t worth the investment, or went off to chase whispers of Hand movement in another part of the world? What happened if, in trusting someone else to guard the apartment, Matt went out to stop some other problem and came home to find…to find the place burned to the ground or riddled with bullet holes?

Maggie rested her hand on his arm. “Maybe we should break it down. For just today, how can I help?”

There was nothing that could be done in a day that could fix this.

“Something small,” she suggested quietly.

He ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. I, uh…I was gonna look up groceries for pregnancy and start stocking up on all of that, but I have this motion to file today, so I wasn’t sure when I could get around to that.”

“I can handle it,” she said immediately. She traced her hand up the side of his face. “And as for you, I want you to take a day and focus on nothing except how to take care of her. Can you do that for me?”

Take care of her. Matt set his shoulders back. “Yeah. I’ll…I’ll try.”

“Good.” She kissed his forehead. “It’s gonna be all right, you hear me? More than all right. God has His hand on all of us.”

“Yeah,” he agreed absently.

 

Take care of her, Maggie said.

There was only one way to do that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, your comments on this story are so lovely and you're already inspiring me! I know I'm behind in responding, but I'll get to it asap.


	3. I'm the First One in Line to Die

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Wasteland" by NEEDTOBREATHE. (Music video with super creepy flowers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se2C3v1a7OY)
> 
> Warning: um, whump. And probably-inaccurate medical care. I use Foggy as my PoV character for the worst of it (arguably) so as to avoid all the medical detail, but if you're squeamish it still might be rough.

Matt

Matt stood in front of the cabinet with his hands on his hips and the chest unlocked and open in front of him. He wished he could see his dad’s stuff, always setting on top of his Daredevil gear. If he could see the red robe, maybe that would help. Give him clarity. Either tell him this was okay or tell him to lock the chest back up and beg Karen to hide the key somewhere he couldn’t find it. But he couldn’t see. So.

He wet his lips. The seconds ticked by.

The sudden realization of the passage of time brought a burst of clarity: he had to do this before Karen got back. Kneeling, he set aside his dad’s stuff and ran his hand over the first thing he found underneath. A forearm guard, one of several he’d bought after Karen pointed out that the fact that he no longer had his armor was no excuse to throw his life away. Matt picked up the hard shell. Felt its weight.

Then he set it on the floor and dragged his fingers in the shape of a cross up to his forehead and across his chest.

 

He’d gotten over the prison’s outer wall before. Recently, too. This time, of course, the trick was getting not just past the outer wall but into the prison itself. And desperate times called for distasteful measures. He camped outside the gate until he found a guard leaving at the end of a shift, as evidenced by the scents clinging to him. Matt tracked the guard’s vehicle, waited until it was rolling past the gates out of sight of the guards, and leapt onto it from behind.

The guard inside slammed on the breaks, swearing and drawing his gun as he scrambled to get out. But it was really no contest. Matt slid over the vehicle to introduce the guard’s head to the heel of Matt’s boot and the man fell like a bag of rocks. Matt quickly stashed the unconscious form behind some trees, although there wasn’t much he could do about the vehicle. He took the time to puncture one of the tires, though, hoping that anyone who found it would assume that the owner had wandered off while waiting for help to arrive. It wouldn’t deflect much suspicion, but it might buy Matt an extra minute or two.

Returning to the guard, Matt stripped off the uniform and pulled it on over his black clothes. Next, he collected the necessary keys and access cards as well as the guard’s phone and tucked his batons into the belt. They’d look out of place, but he didn’t dare leave them behind. He also picked up the gun, familiarizing himself with its make and the crucial fact that there were fourteen rounds in the magazine before holstering it.

The hike back to the prison was a bit too long. Long enough for the surge of adrenaline from the short fight to drain away, leaving him with a twisted, tense feeling—anxiety buzzing in his chest and no way to purge it. Long enough for his thoughts to start spiraling.

This was a mistake.

The front door to the prison slid open to grant him entrance. One of Matt’s hands curled preemptively into a fist, but the woman at the metal detector was jittery enough to be a rookie. She didn’t realize Matt didn’t match whoever owned the access card he was using; she let him step through the metal detector unchallenged.

Another gate creaked open ahead. How many locks were there now between him and the outside world? Matt tried not to think about the last time he’d been in a place like this, but he could feel the sweat on his forehead, the back of his neck. Could only hope no one else noticed.

Surreptitiously wiping his forehead with his sleeve, he pretended to focus on the phone as he navigated the halls. Fisk’s metronome of a heartbeat was a beacon.

Someone stopped in Matt’s path. “Forgot something, Hunt? Thought you clocked out.”

Aiming his eyes at the phone, Matt tried to simply wave this off. His interrogator shrugged and must’ve had better things to do than push for a real answer. Still, Matt didn’t want another interruption. He held the phone to his ear as if listening to a conversation and quickened his pace like he was running late for something, keeping his eyes downwards.

He hated prisons.

But this wasn’t like last time. This time, he wasn’t going in blind. He knew exactly what he was getting into.

Namely, Fisk’s cell.

He stopped outside the heavy steel door. Fisk’s heartbeat didn’t change—had he even noticed? Matt wasn’t sure if there was a window or not. Maybe Fisk had no idea. Matt could turn around and walk out of here right now and Fisk would never realize what almost happened. The weight of the gun in its holster felt right and wrong at the same time.

The door was secured with an electric lock with a keypad beside it; Matt tried passing his access card over it, but nothing happened. Well, it seemed optimistic to think that any guard’s card would grant access to Wilson Fisk’s cell. Or maybe Matt was just missing something visual.

But the prison wouldn’t be stupid enough to rely solely on the electric lock. Any loss of power would trigger the fail-secure locks to seal the doors, preventing prisoners from escaping. Which meant there had to be a backup mechanical lock in case someone needed to access the room from the outside.

Matt ran his fingers over the door around the handle. There. A tiny hole. He had a handful of lock picks, bought off Amazon like most of his Daredevil stuff. Nothing quite designed for this caliber of lock, but that wasn’t such an obstacle when Matt could hear the tumblers shifting. The pick he selected was more flexible than the others; he slid it into the hole and listened as it scraped against metal. Drawing the pick back out, he creased it in three new places and reinserted it.

 _Click, click, click-click-click_. And the heavier sound of a lock disengaging.

The heartbeat in the other room sped up.

Okay. Matt took a deep breath and pushed the door open.

The room was narrow with a bed pushed against the left wall where Fisk was seated. His massive head was turned towards Matt, breathing in Matt’s direction. “Murdock.”

Matt bit out his name through clenched teeth. “Fisk.”

“I don’t…understand…why you’ve gone to the trouble of coming here.”

Drawing one of his batons, Matt held it in the doorway and stepped forward, letting the door slide shut against the baton, leaving it wedged just slightly open.

Fisk rested one fisted hand on his knee. “Have you come to gloat in the face of my weakness? My loss?”

Matt held perfectly still. “Yeah,” he said quietly.

The muscles in Fisk’s body tensed, straining beneath his prison jumpsuit. “You killed Vanessa.”

 _God, forgive me._ “Yeah. I did.”

Now Fisk was shaking. “The one thing—the _one person_ that gave my life meaning.”

Matt had to sell this. He moved to the right until he was standing in front of the bed with his back to the wall. “She was tearing this city apart and with what you’ve done, how you’ve played the NYPD and the FBI, I couldn’t trust the system to stop her. It’s your fault—I wouldn’t have done anything if I could’ve known you’d stay out of it.”

Fisk’s other hand formed a second fist, clenching tighter and tighter.

Matt spoke faster. “And I know we had an agreement but you have to understand, this city matters more to me and she was hurting innocent people. I don’t even care if you go after Foggy or K-Karen because this city—”

“Liar!” Fisk shot to his feet. He took up half the room.

Matt flinched backwards, heart pounding in his ears so fast and so loud he could barely hear over it. “If you hurt either of them, the other will drag Vanessa’s name through the mud, and not just her. They’ll go after your mother’s memory if you touch them!”

Fisk suddenly held completely, terrifyingly still. “You think that matters to me? You think the slander could possibly matter to me when both of the ones I love are dead?”

Fisk had nothing left to lose and Matt had everything to lose. Terror seized his brain. “Hurting them means nothing to me, I swear, I don’t _care_ , I don’t—”

A mocking laugh. “They mean more to you than your own life. I am familiar with that, and I know what it feels like to lose them, to be forced to live on without them. You don’t, yet.” Fisk sucked in a breath. “But you will.”

 _God, forgive me._ Matt lifted his chin. “It won’t be the same, because I did it to you first, and nothing you do will come close to what it felt like for me. Anything you do will be drowned out by missing everything you’ve lost and you won’t be able to enjoy it.” He raised his voice, drawing his remaining baton. “But I enjoyed it, Fisk! I _enjoyed_ it!”

With a roar, Fisk lunged. But his bulk slowed him; Matt ducked down and to the right and Fisk’s hands closed over empty air instead of around his neck. Matt threw his club into Fisk’s face and skipped backwards to avoid the blood spewing from Fisk’s mouth.

But Matt didn’t have time to draw the gun before Fisk swung wildly again, too fueled by rage to be strategic. Matt dodged, torqueing his body to drive his elbow into Fisk’s temple. It would’ve put anyone else on the ground.

Fisk just gave his head a sharp shake and surged forward, absorbing everything Matt threw at him like he didn’t even feel it. Matt’s heel hit the back wall; he struck his fist against Fisk’s nose and took the instant granted him by Fisk’s watering eyes to dive desperately to the right again, rolling over the bed and landing on the floor.

The door was right behind him now, but Matt didn’t reach for it. It was his turn to advance; he jumped and threw two kicks—the first caught Fisk in the chest and the second clipped the side of Fisk’s skull. But Matt barely landed when Fisk recovered with a yell, grabbing Matt’s shoulder and throwing him backwards into the corner. The yell was still echoing around the tiny room when Matt’s head cracked against the concrete and the world on fire momentarily blinked out.

The yelling was good, right? Yelling meant security would come, and they’d know Fisk was fighting, and they’d throw him in solitary. Maybe.

The fire returned too late for Matt to dodge Fisk’s next strike; all he could do was throw up his arm in front of his face. A thin, cracking sensation splintered across Matt’s arm and through his face as Fisk’s weight landed.

But Matt was still alive and a siren was blaring outside. His right hand caught hold of the baton he’d thrown, now rolling over the cold floor. Matt brought it up, driving the end under Fisk’s chin. Fisk’s head snapped backwards.

Footsteps in the distance. Matt scrabbled with the door, wrenching it open, stumbling out into the hall. No one would believe Fisk if he said Matthew Murdock broke in, and who cared if security found Daredevil’s baton? This was just proof that the prison room wasn’t as secure as they’d thought, and this was _Fisk_. They wouldn’t take any chances.

Please, please, let them throw Fisk in solitary.

Fisk hurled himself through the open doorway, forcing Matt to scramble down the hall away from him. Forget worrying about getting caught—this was survival. Matt was still gripping his baton in his right hand; he took a chance and threw it at the lights along the ceiling, cutting off the hum of electricity as the circuit broke, chilling the slight warmth from above. Didn’t stop Fisk; didn’t even slow him down. But it gave Matt the chance to dodge as Fisk barreled towards him.

Security spilled into the other side of the hallway. Not that Fisk listened to their commands. Matt kept moving. There was the door he’d used; he shoved it open with his right hand. He was fast enough compared to Fisk that he had time to kick it close. Not that it would keep Fisk back.

But then, from the other side of the door, he heard the familiar _zap_ of a taser.

 _Zap, zap-zap, zap_.

Apparently, it took a lot to put Fisk down.

Matt caught himself leaning against the wall in another hallway. Couldn’t stay here, couldn’t get caught. He drifted down the hall, retracing his steps, operating instinctively as he followed his own scent trail. Wasn’t thinking clear enough to do any more than that.

Someone ran towards him, asking if he was okay, asking where he was going. Matt clocked the guy on the side of the head with a baton before he considered that maybe there was a less violent approach he could’ve taken.

Too late now.

Finally, he was outside. The night air was blessedly cool against the sweat stuck to his skin. From the fight, yeah, and also from the pain in his arm and his nose and, worst of all, arcing across his cheekbone under his left eye. Blood dripped into his mouth, its metallic taste settling on the back of his tongue. Breathing through his nose, he counted the distant throbbing along his skull, willing himself not to throw up.

But hey, mission accomplished.

Well, maybe. He wasn’t entirely sure anymore what his mission even was.

And he couldn’t stay here. Fisk was the priority, but security would come looking for him, too. He was such a long way from home, though. Where was he even supposed to go?

Shoving his club into his belt, Matt made it over the gates (nearly fell off trying to scale it again, but he didn’t; he was fine) and started up the road. What was he supposed to do, though? Call a cab? “Hi, please take me somewhere but not the hospital. And don’t call the police. Have a great day.” Call Foggy? “Hi, I was an idiot and I don’t think I did anything to stop Fisk from killing you, but please help me as long as you’re still alive.” Call Karen and…what, say goodbye?

No, no, he couldn’t.

He fumbled for his phone with his shaking right hand and held down the button that would call Stone. Keeping the phone at his side (too tired and shaky to bring it up to his ear), he wandered further down the road, listening to it ring. And ring. And ring.

He was listing to the side. To the right, like he could outrun all the pain.

Voicemail.

“Hey,” Matt said, even though the phone was dangling from his hand. Stone would still hear. “Need…I need help. Could you just…where are you? M’by the prison. I lost one of my clubs, Stone. Lost…” How had he managed that? “Where are you, Stone?”

His face hurt _so much_.

He hung up. Stone wasn’t going to help. Matt kept moving, feeling the dust mixing with his sweat and blood. He was still trembling, whether from adrenaline or pain he didn’t know. But he was kind of scared he was going to drop his phone, so he put it carefully back in his pocket.

After managing somewhere between fifteen and twenty more steps, he halted again, and found himself sitting on the ground. This was…not good. No way could he make it home in this state, and even if he did, he’d come face-to-face with Karen. And the tiny new heartbeat.

A lump rose in his throat.

He dug out his phone again, mostly to distract himself now, and hit the fourth button. The ghost of the earlier ringtone was echoing in his ears, and what if she didn’t answer? What if Fisk already got to her?

But Maggie answered on the second ring. “Matthew?”

“Hey,” he managed, voice cracking down the middle of the word.

“Honey, where are you? What happened?”

“I’m…” He drew in a deep, steadying breath. “Are you at the church?”

“I’m right here. Where are you? Are you all right?”

“See you soon,” he sighed, and stuffed the phone clumsily back into his pocket. Then he paused, considering the gun. Didn’t want to face any questions about why he had it. He released the magazine, removed the slide, and left the two pieces and the rest of the gun in three separate dumpsters on his way to the church.

 

Foggy

He was losing years off his life. _Years_. Maggie had called to say that Matt had called, weird and cryptic, so now Foggy was pacing in the church basement. Maggie hadn’t asked for him to actually come; she’d just called to get Claire’s number, leaving Foggy to kick himself for the severe oversight in not getting Claire and Maggie to exchange numbers before.

And yeah, Foggy also took it upon himself to show up too even though he wasn’t exactly a medical expert. But something was obviously wrong, so he figured he should be present.

“I wanna call Karen,” he said for the third time.

“You’ll just worry her unnecessarily,” Maggie said, which was a different variation of the same thing she’d said twice before. “We don’t know what’s wrong.”

“She’s his _wife_.”

“She doesn’t need to panic yet,” Maggie insisted.

Foggy scoffed. Of the three employees at Nelson, Murdock, and Page (soon to be changed to Nelson, Murdock, and Murdock once they figured out the paperwork nightmare), Karen was the least likely to panic. But Matt had more in common with his mother than just faith and deflection. Apparently, they also shared the keep-things-secret-wherever-possible gene that tended to manifest itself even more whenever it was possible to keep said secrets from Karen.

And because they also had extreme stubbornness in common, Foggy knew better than to argue. He just kept pacing. “Shouldn’t he be here by now?”

Maggie pursed her lips wordlessly, standing very still with one arm wrapped around herself while she chewed on the fingernails of her other hand.

At that moment, there was a crash from above. Foggy dashed for the stairs and literally collided with Matt stumbling onto the top step, wearing some kind of…guard uniform?

Alarm bells went off in Foggy’s head.

“Hey, Fogs,” Matt slurred, leaning into him far too heavily.

Foggy’s stomach flipped. “I got you, buddy.” Pulling Matt’s arm around his shoulders, Foggy helped them downwards. From this angle, Foggy couldn’t get a great look at his best friend, but Maggie was waiting at the foot of the stairs and whatever she saw caused her face to become a stony mask of medical detachment.

“Get him on the bed,” she ordered crisply.

“M’fine,” Matt informed no one in particular.

Now that he was standing under the lights of the basement, he looked truly awful. Blood dripped from his nose and down the back of his neck, but the worst of it had nothing to do with blood. His face was _broken_ —broken nose, a lurid bruise under and around his left eye, and swelling along his cheekbone.

Foggy sent Claire another text: _HURRY._ Then he focused on steering Matt towards the bed. When he tried to turn Matt around so he could sit down, Matt just kept on turning like he didn’t know what Foggy was trying to do but wanted to be helpful, so Foggy stopped him with his hands on Matt’s biceps.

Well, that stopped him _really_ well.

Matt entire body clenched up like he’d been shrink wrapped, jerking his left arm away from Foggy as the blood drained from his face. “Stop, stop, stop!” He held his arm stiffly against his chest like he could shield it from anyone touching it.

Maggie was at his side in a flash. “What happened?”

“His arm,” Foggy said weakly. Didn’t look broken, but then, he wasn’t the one with x-ray senses.

“Matthew, sit down,” Maggie ordered.

He did, basically dropping onto the bed and locking a groan behind his teeth.

“You okay, buddy?” Foggy asked quietly.

Matt’s forehead creased in a wince. “Hurts.”

Foggy’s stomach flipped again. “Where?”

His weak gesture basically encompassed his entire body, but he waved his hand an extra time around the left side of his face. “Can’t…can’t see.”

“Newsflash, buddy,” Foggy said, shooting for lighthearted and missing by a mile.

Maggie drew closer. “Stay still,” she told her son. She put her hands on his shoulders, trying to angle his body so she could better reach his cheek, but he flinched as her hand landed too close to his injured arm. Foggy felt a weird relief that he wasn’t the only one messing this up. She let out a stream of apologies under her breath that Matt didn’t even seem to hear.

Foggy kept his voice low. “Matt, what happened?”

No answer.

Maggie’s phone buzzed. She picked it up and immediately let out a tiny prayer of relief. “Claire’s here.”

Right, because Claire magically fixed everything. She burst into the basement a second later in all her Supernurse glory, bearing top quality medical supplies and bringing a healthy dose of experience coupled with slightly more objectivity where Matt Murdock was concerned.

“What did this?” she demanded.

“He won’t tell us,” Foggy reported uselessly.

“Can’t or won’t?” Claire sat on the bed beside her patient, effortlessly taking his hand as he reached blindly towards her. She squeezed it.

Foggy had no idea, but yeah, that did seem like an important distinction.

Clearly giving up on getting an answer, Claire rested her fingertips just under Matt’s chin, tilting his head. “A broken nose and a zygomatic fracture,” she muttered. “What did you do, Matt, faceplant onto concrete?”

His eyes flickered closed. “No…”

But he didn’t elaborate, because he was concussed or high on pain or just because he was annoying like that. “Zygo—what?” Foggy asked.

“Broken cheekbone.” Claire held out one hand towards Maggie, snapping her fingers. “Pain meds, and I need something for the swelling.” While Maggie whipped around to dig something out of somewhere, Claire turned all her attention back to Matt. “Breathing’s fine,” she said, as if to herself. “No orbital facture. Still. _Cielos_ , Matt.” She sat back. “What’re we gonna do with you?”

“Psych eval?” Foggy asked hopefully.

Maggie returned with water and pain meds, which Matt consumed almost dreamily. He didn’t resist or complain at all, which either said a lot about how much he trusted her or said a lot about what kind of shape he was in.

“Sister,” Claire began.

“Maggie,” she corrected.

Claire smiled thinly. “I hear I have you to thank for the fact that he survived Midland Circle. Sorry I didn’t get the chance to thank you before, but we were kind of busy keeping him alive.”

“Is there time now?” Maggie’s eyes were fixed on her son.

“I’m just stalling while those meds kick in,” Claire explained bluntly. “His cheekbone’s broken. I’m gonna have to cut his cheek open to reduce the bone. You hear that, Matt?” she tossed over her shoulder. “Impromptu surgery in this church basement. How’s that sound?”

“Great,” he mumbled.

“Idiot,” she spat.

“His arm, too,” Foggy supplied.

Claire scowled. “Because of course.”

Foggy studied his best friend, slumped on the cot, bruised and broken and bleeding. Foggy had kind of thought such a thing was impossible, but Matt Murdock was no longer pretty. In fact, he looked green, and when Foggy touched his forehead, the skin was chilled and clammy. “You gonna puke?”

“Maybe,” Matt breathed, and Foggy spun around to grab a trash can.

“Maggie, check for a concussion,” Claire barked.

The nun opened his right eye and shone a light at it; Foggy craned his neck to watch the unchanging black disk of his pupil. But Matt flinched when she tried to open his left eye, and she whispered apologies while he choked back pained sounds. Looking like it was hurting her as much as him, Maggie finally got the eye open enough to see that this pupil was far smaller than the other.

“Concussion,” she reported.

Claire swore beautifully in Spanish. “We’ll deal with that later. Hang with me, Matt.” She pulled out a…yikes, a scalpel? “I’m gonna fix your cheekbone first. Ready?”

Matt nodded tightly.

“When you say fix…” Foggy began.

Matt stiffened as Claire drew the sharp point along his cheek. Foggy averted his eyes as the skin split, but he still saw the blood running down his face in his peripheral vision. The inevitable scar was _not_ going to jive with his lawyer persona—Matt, you utter idiot. The scent of blood hung heavily in the air, even for Foggy.

“Hold still.” Claire’s hands moved across his face and Matt swallowed three times in rapid succession, clearly fighting back nausea. “I’m not fixing your face if you throw up on me.”

“Won’t,” he said breathlessly, then seemed to think better of opening his mouth at all.

It felt like an eternity later, and Foggy had never been so thankful that he couldn’t hear bones creaking and shifting, but finally Claire snapped her fingers again for the suturing kit and started stitching everything back up. “I don’t think he needs any plates or screws unless he decides to do a flip or something.” She brushed her hand under Matt’s chin, the gesture somehow more affectionate than angry, which made her a way better person than Foggy. “Do you want screws, Matt?”

His one good eye was wide and sad. “No.”

“Thought not.” She touched her lips ever-so-slightly to his forehead. “No parkour until I say so.”

Matt nodded and he looked so much like a kicked puppy that Foggy believed him.

“Okay.” She pulled back. “How’s your arm?”

“Hurts,” Matt said quietly.

She actually sounded sympathetic when she said, “Yeah, I bet.” Like all Matt’s injuries were adding up in her head to the point that she couldn’t bear to lecture him even if he _had_ brought this on himself. Which, to be fair, maybe he hadn’t. Who knew? Not Foggy, because Matt wasn’t saying more than monosyllabic sentences at a time. “I can set the bone, but it’s not like I can just put a cast on here in this church. So I’m thinking this is a really good time to—”

“No hospitals,” Matt said. Foggy regretted wishing for polysyllabic sentences.

“Setting it won’t do much good if you don’t even have a sling. Matt, you should’ve _called_ me. I could’ve brought stuff.”

“Will this do?” Maggie held up a dusty splint that she must’ve dug out of some ancient kit somewhere. Foggy hadn’t even realized she’d gone.

“It’ll have to,” Claire said darkly. “The break is recent enough that I think I can do a closed reduction, but it’s gonna be painful.”

Matt managed a weak, welcome-to-my-life kind of smile.

“Are the pain meds kicking in?”

Would it even make a difference for a guy who could hear his bones shifting?

“Yes,” Matt answered, which meant absolutely nothing.

But it must’ve been good enough for Claire because she set her hands gingerly on either side of his arm—and, yep, Matt tensed up like a little kid bracing for a flu shot. “Tell me how much to move it.”

“The top piece needs to go up a bit,” he said stiffly. “And—and to the left. My left, sorry, your right.” He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw. “Just do it.”

Foggy quickly looked away. Claire must’ve done some kind of experimental motion, because Matt made a pained sound through his gritted teeth. “Okay,” she said calmly. “I’m just gonna—”

Matt cried out and Maggie stepped closer with the splint, so Foggy assumed Claire interrupted herself to set the bone. Which meant it was over, right? He turned around to see Matt sucking in a breath while Maggie secured the splint to his arm.

“I’m okay,” he said in an exhale. “It’s okay.”

Foggy wondered who he was trying to convince.

It didn’t matter. It wasn’t working.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not expect to spend so much time researching: 1) broken cheekbones; 2) glocks; 3) electromagnetic locks. But hey, my engineering brother would be proud of me for distinguishing between fail-safe locks and fail-secure locks, so at least there's that.
> 
> Also: if you're confused about Matt's motivations here, that's cool. So is he. There are a few specific actions he takes that could reveal his subconscious intention(s), so you might be able to figure it out, but good luck convincing him.


	4. A Victim to Storms I Contrive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Let Me Die" by the Classic Crime (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0toXMy55evc).

Foggy

Claire kissed Matt’s forehead. “Good job, Saint Matthew.”

He seemed to lean into her touch for a second before remembering where he was and pulling back. “Done?” He asked plaintively.

“Unless there’s anything else I should know about?”

Eyes fluttering closed again, he let out a long sigh. “Think I’m good. Can I…can I get some water?”

“I’ll do it,” Foggy said, happy to be useful, but Matt’s hand twitched towards him in a motion that looked almost desperate, so Foggy thought better of it. Instead, he shuffled closer and sat on the bed at Matt’s right side. Matt only hesitated for a second before leaning cautiously against him.

Claire sounded almost as tired as Matt when she said she’d be right back, and retreated up the stairs for the water.

The heavy stillness that now fell over the basement seemed to be trying to make up for all the earlier chaos. Maggie gently pushed Matt’s hair back from his forehead. “Matthew,” she said quietly. “Where did you go?”

He gave the tiniest shake of his head Foggy had ever seen.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” With the utmost care, Maggie slipped her hand under Matt’s chin. “You’re not making all of us go through all of that without even telling us why. You’re gonna talk to us.”

Well, Foggy thought Maggie was being a bit optimistic. Matt was still a master in the art of deflection and Foggy knew his best friend well enough to recognize the way Matt’s sightless eyes hardened.

Sure enough: “I made a mistake,” Matt said. “Sorry…sorry that you…had to deal with it.”

This was a really crappy day but the one, tiny highlight was that when Claire trotted back down the stairs with a glass of water, Foggy had not one but _two_ people with whom he could exchange exasperated looks.

“The issue,” Claire said swiftly, handing Matt the water, “is not having to deal with it. The issue is you not telling us what we’re dealing with at all.”

Well, that was one issue. Foggy could think of like three others already, and he could definitely come up with more if someone gave him extra time.

Matt drank half the glass, then balanced it between his knees, staring blindly at the floor. “Sorry.”

Wait, was…was he really not going to explain at all? For all that Matt making an award-winning stupid decision was par for the course, Matt refusing to _talk_ about it was different. In fact, his sudden evasiveness was taking Foggy back in time by several near-death experiences. Hadn’t they had enough personal-growth-instilling conversations to be past secrecy over injuries this severe?

Maggie took her son’s hand, a soft gesture completely at odds with her tone. “Talk to us.”

Matt’s eyes reddened and flashed. “It was just a stupid mistake.”

The flatly defensive voice triggered a sinking feeling in Foggy’s gut. “C’mon, buddy,” he tried. “We just wanna help.”

Matt closed his eyes like he knew they were giving him away. “You have. Thank you.”

“Thank us by giving us some actual answers,” Claire suggested sharply.

But Matt kept his eyes closed.

Foggy carefully, carefully nudged his leg. “Hey, buddy. At least tell us if all of this—” He gestured at Matt’s face, “—is a danger sign for the rest of us. Does this…” He told himself not to be a coward. “Does this mean Fisk’s finally doing something?”

“Not…” Matt’s voice wavered. “Not to you. Just me.” He started fidgeting with the loose fabric of his pants. “I went to see him.”

Everyone else in the room froze.

“I went to see F-Fisk,” Matt repeated, like his previous statement was somehow ambiguous.

Worst nightmare. Actual worst nightmare. “You _what?_ ”

“Broke into his prison cell. I just thought…I could talk to him, or…get him to see that going after you wouldn’t…wouldn’t make a difference. But I—I—I couldn’t—I didn’t—” He swallowed and when he spoke again, his voice was small. “I don’t think it worked.”

Claire let out a low hiss. “You stupid, _stupid_ martyr.”

“Not helpful,” Maggie muttered.

Matt just sat there with his head down, plucking at the stiff fabric of the uniform pants.

Foggy clung to sanity. “So you…you went to see him. Okay. Is he…” A sinking, swooping feeling settled in his gut. “Is he running the prison again? Is that what happened?” He imagined guards running around with…with stun guns or whatever they had, using it all against Matt. But if Matt was keeping taser injuries a secret, Foggy was gonna throw something at him.

But no, Matt was shaking his head. “He can’t get out. The prison’s…actually doing its job.” Then he waited, like he was hoping one of them would give him an out. Connect the dots so he wouldn’t have to explain it out loud. But apparently none of them were feeling that generous. Looking like he wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole or otherwise escape the intensity of three stares which he could surely feel boring into him, Matt spelled it out. “I broke into his cell.”

Foggy was gonna kill him. This was exactly the kind of reckless stupidity he would’ve expected from Matt back when he’d tried that whole “Matt Murdock isn’t gonna be a part of me anymore” routine, but Foggy thought they were _beyond_ that by this point.

Now Foggy felt something unfamiliar tightening itself up in his brain. Anger. Because that wasn’t the whole story, that much was obvious. Sure, maybe Matt had hoped he could somehow logic Fisk out of his vengefulness, but despite all current evidence to the contrary, Matt wasn’t stupid. And his whole “I am not Matt Murdock” thing hadn’t actually happened that long ago. Maybe Foggy was the stupid one for thinking Matt had ever made that much progress undoing his suicidal martyr tendencies.

The anger spread from Foggy’s brain into his voice. “You wanted him to kill you.”

“No,” Matt whispered.

“You went there _hoping_ he’d kill you.”

“No, no, I—I wanted him to get caught fighting, so he’d be put in solitary or something.”

Yeah, maybe that was part of it, but Foggy still knew better. He felt sick, and he clamped his mouth right before he could say something that would just make everything worse, counting the seconds as he tried to calm down.

“Why didn’t you ask for help?” Maggie asked gently, unaccusingly. “Why didn’t you bring Stone?”

Because if _any_ part of Matt thought that the whole situation would be resolved if Fisk just killed him, there’d be no point in bringing backup. Matt didn’t answer.

Claire pressed a hand to her mouth. Foggy missed her sarcasm. No matter how bloody Matt got, Claire’s fiery wit was an anchor, a reassurance that she, at least, was in control of the situation. Foggy hadn’t realized how much he relied on it in times like this until now.

Foggy looked up at the ceiling to keep the tears in check, even though Matt could definitely smell them anyway. It was just…it was just scary, all right? Sad and scary and surely there was something Foggy could’ve said or done that would’ve prevented this.

Well, Foggy would do everything in his power to make sure Matt wasn’t tempted to try anything like this again. He looked back down at his best friend. “Look, you’re back with us. You’re safe. That’s the important thing, understand?”

Matt had the audacity to _shrug_.

But it wasn’t adding up. “Vanessa died ages ago,” Foggy said. “Why do this _now?_ ”

Matt’s eyes slowly opened. “Karen’s pregnant.”

Wait, what?

Oh.

_Oh._

“ _Cielos_ ,” Claire breathed.

That explained it. And it changed everything.

Foggy ran a hand through his hair. “Geeze, Matt.”

“I told Fisk I did it.” Matt started rubbing at the dried blood on his pants. “I told him I killed Vanessa, but even that won’t be enough to keep Karen safe. I just…I thought it’d slow him down from getting to her. Distract him. I guess.”

Which…actually, Foggy could see his point. If Fisk realized that Karen killed Vanessa, he wouldn’t hesitate. He wouldn’t waste time thinking about the best way to make Karen suffer; he’d kill her as fast as possible just to wipe her off the face of the earth. But if Fisk thought _Matt_ was responsible, all that immediate rage would be directed against Matt, not Karen, and if Fisk really wanted to make Matt suffer, Fisk would have to think about whether it would be more painful to go after Foggy instead, or to after Foggy as well as Karen, and maybe Fisk would stop and think about hurting Ella, too, and…and it was all horrifying and sickening but Foggy _got_ it.

“Hey,” Foggy said quietly. “I understand. And…huh. Congratulations.” He glanced up at Maggie. “To both of you.” Maggie actually smiled, joy lighting up her face for an instant. But then it hit Foggy—Matt was a _dad_ now, and he’d been _this close_ to just throwing his life away. Which was a cruel thing to do to the people who cared about him, to Foggy and Karen, but it was an unforgivable thing to do to his own kid.

Matt of all people should know better.

“What were you _thinking?_ ” Foggy burst out before he could stop himself.

“He wasn’t,” Maggie sighed.

Somehow, impossibly, Matt managed to look even more wounded, like they were being somehow _unfair_. His good eye shifted helplessly in his mom’s direction. “You’re…you’re the one who…told me to take care of her.”

Covering her mouth with her hands, she mumbled something that sounded like _I should’ve known_ and might have involved a curse somewhere. “Matthew, I was talking about taking her to dinner and giving her a foot rub.”

“Guess I…misunderstood.” It sounded like it was supposed to be a joke, but he fumbled the execution.

Claire cleared her throat. “All right. Listen carefully, Matt. Tomorrow, I want you to lie low. Don’t do anything too strenuous, either physically or mentally. If you wanna try to meditate your way out of a concussion, fine, go for it. But you realize you can’t fight with that arm for six weeks.”

Matt gave her a look of utter disbelief.

Her voice became dangerous. “I’m serious.”

“I can’t just—” He cut himself off when she made a weird, warning, hissing sound. “Claire…”

“If you get hurt again doing something stupid when I told you to rest, I _will_ drag you to the nearest hospital. Am I lying?”

Judging by the look on his face, he knew she wasn’t. “Yeah, okay.” He pushed himself more upright and immediately became as pale as a hardboiled egg. “Thanks for the help, really.”

Foggy reached for him at the same time as Claire. “Wait, don’t—”

Too late. Matt got to his feet, tried to throw out his left arm for balance, and crumpled back down. Fortunately (unfortunately), Foggy had plenty of experience with this kind of thing by now and caught him before he could smack onto the hard basement floor.

Still, Foggy definitely jostled the broken arm and he was ninety-two percent sure Matt would’ve been screaming if he’d been conscious. Small mercies, though. He arranged Matt back on the bed, wishing he could put this on his résumé.

_Defense lawyer. Partner at Nelson and Murdock. Excellent intuition and lightning reflexes capable of keeping blockheaded vigilantes from giving themselves a second concussion._

Maggie was glaring at her son’s unconscious form. “If he can hear his own bones shifting, why doesn’t he _stop?_ ”

“Ding, ding,” Foggy said tiredly. “You win Question of the Year.”

 

Stone – about two hours ago

Footsteps approached, heavy and lumbering and somehow still managing to sound nervous. Or maybe the nervousness was more evident in the breathing: light, fast, almost shaky. Stone lifted his head from his meditations. “He’s almost here,” he informed the near-empty room.

A shadow stood in front of the door. It seemed to be steeling itself.

Stone was so concentrating on tracking both Melvin and Dex that he jolted when vibrations ran up his leg. It was his phone, just his phone. Stone reached for it almost instinctively because there were very few people left on Earth who would call him and he was certain it was Matty.

But the shadow outside through his weight against the door, cracking it open. Stone let the phone go to voicemail and stood up.

The door closed behind the shadow, but the figure flicked on lights a second later, giving Stone a clear view of the look of betrayal on his face. “You’re not supposed to be here.” His head turned towards Dex. “Did Mr. Fisk send you?”

Dex tilted his head curiously. “You’re the one who built my suit.”

“It’s not your suit,” Melvin snapped.

Interesting. Stone took a lazy step forward. “Why—”

“You shouldn’t be here!” And Melvin dove to the side, to a workbench laden with tools.

Stone flicked a knife at him; the blade imbedded in the bench between Melvin’s hands. Melvin’s head snapped up, eyes wide. But without a second to spare, he grabbed the knife and jerked it free.

“Don’t bother,” Stone suggested, but Melvin disregarded the advice, running forward and slashing. Stone rolled to the side, popping up and balancing another knife in his hand, debating which would be the best place to hit that wouldn’t kill Melvin.

Before he could attack, Dex let out a yell. He grabbed a wrench, spun it once, and cocked his arm.

Wonderful. Melvin now ran towards Dex, but Stone was faster, putting himself between them. He tossed the knife at Dex, striking the handle of the wrench only a few centimeters above Dex’s fingers. He dropped the wrench in shock. Meanwhile, a swift kick to Melvin’s knee put him on the ground; another kick to his wrist made him lose his grip on the knife.

“Stay back,” Stone snapped at Dex as he grabbed the discarded knife, holding it to Melvin’s neck until Melvin’s whole body tensed up. Stone leaned in close. “What does Fisk want with you?”

The other man jerked in a last desperate bid for freedom, so Stone let the knife puncture his neck. Blood welled from the cut and Melvin froze, quailing. “I don’t work for Fisk!”

“Lopez, then,” Stone growled. “The lawyer. He’s the one who got you out. What does he want with you?”

“Nothing,” Melvin gasped. “I’m just supposed to wait.”

“For what?” Stone snarled.

“I’m just supposed to wait!”

“Until when? What’s the signal?”

“I don’t know! They said I’d know when I saw it, I _don’t know_.”

Frustrated, Stone pulled the knife back and threw Melvin on the ground. “That’s it? You just sit here, lazing your life away until Fisk or Lopez or someone else in a suit beckons?”

“Not lazing,” Melvin muttered, face against the dirty floor. “Practicing. Getting ready.”

“For _what?_ ”

“The mission. I don’t know.”

There, that was something. “What does practicing involve? What are you doing to get ready?”

“I’ve got…I’ve got this bad stuff, really bad.” Sniffing, Melvin sat up but kept his head aimed towards the floor. “A drug,” he said guiltily. “It’s dangerous. And…and there’s that.” He pointed to the corner. “I’m supposed to practice with it.”

Dex scuttled over to the corner to investigate and Stone’s stomach flipped when he pulled what looked like a machine gun out of a case.

“Put that down,” Stone said calmly.

Dex’s eyes were bright. “Where d’you practice? You can’t shoot something like this wherever you want.”

“Put that down.” Stone pulled the knife back from Melvin’s neck and spun it once. “I won’t ask again.”

Dex just looked at him and Stone, to his horror, could not read Dex’s expression. Then Dex shrugged and set the gun back in the case. He gave it a little kick, then wandered closer to Stone and Melvin. “Where d’you shoot it?”

Melvin flinched at his approach. “I don’t know, there’s a range. The lawyer takes me there sometimes.”

“What kind of range?” Dex demanded. “Military or commercial?”

“Military, yeah,” Melvin stammered. “I guess. They all wear uniforms there.”

Dex grinned up at Stone. “So the lawyer’s got military connections.”

Well, wasn’t that just splendid.

 

Matt

He blinked, coming back to himself outside the door to his own apartment. It was so easy to get lost in his thoughts right now. He kept thinking of the prison, replaying everything he'd done wrong.

He’d had one job to do and he’d failed. Failed spectacularly, in fact, and made everything worse than it was before. Matt stopped in the hall outside his door, trying to refocus. He heard Dr. Richland’s voice in the back of his head, telling him to identify his own cognitive dissonance. She would call this…catastrophizing, probably. Imagining an imminent worst-case scenario no matter what.

Except it couldn’t be catastrophizing if the situation was _actually_ a catastrophe, right?

Fumbling for the key, he unlocked the door, hearing Karen’s heartrate spike as he distracted her from whatever she was doing. She met him in the hallway, footsteps stuttering to a stop right in front of him, heartrate speeding up as she lifted her hand, letting it hover just shy of his face. “Oh, Matt,” she breathed.

He felt sick to his stomach. Would’ve been nice to blame it on the concussion, and there _was_ that, but he recognized the way guilt twisted up his insides too well by this point. “Hey. I’m sorry about…this.” He couldn’t quite articulate why he felt the need to apologize for his own injuries, but it felt right.

“What happened?”

Closing his eyes, he focused on her sweet scent, wishing he could just…just sort of skip this part.

Gingerly, she put a hand on his good arm, guiding him to the couch in the living room. “You look terrible. This isn’t normal.”

He managed a weak, lopsided smile, trying to find a compliment in the fact that at least she recognized that yeah, getting this torn apart _wasn’t_ normal. He lowered himself onto the couch and she knelt on the cushion next to him, her hand hovering uncertainly around his face before settling, gentle as a summer breeze, in his hair.

“Where were you last night?”

His head snapped towards her at the memory of waking up on the cold floor of the church basement, of Maggie’s hand under his chin as she pulled him upright.

_Where did you go last night?_

_I put in way too much work to quit on you now._

_Give yourself time to heal, or you’re gonna get yourself killed._

He blinked and stood up.

_God, forgive me._

“Matt?” Karen’s voice was sharper. “You with me?”

“What?”

She swore softly. “You’re really messed up right now.”

“No, I’m fine…” He used to keep secrets out of necessity. Also, if he believed Dr. Richland (which he did), out of a desire to maintain some level of control over his mess of a life. And also (he was less certain about this idea) because it gave him some form of power over the people in his life. Maybe when he was a kid, blind and angry at the world and freshly dealing with Stick’s abandonment, that last one was true. He really didn’t think it was true anymore.

But admitting that he’d made a mistake, admitting that he’d failed, was a bit different from admitting to heightened senses or special training.

Or maybe categorizing his secrets like that was just his attempt to justify keeping them.

He honestly didn’t know, was the thing, and his concussion should probably not be paired with this much psychoanalysis.

“I’m gonna get some water.” He started edging towards the kitchen.

She was already on her feet. “I’ll get it, just sit down.”

“I’m fine, I can handle—”

“ _Matt_ —”

His burner buzzed, interrupting them both. Grimacing, Matt leaned against the counter, forcing his tired brain to logic its way to figuring out who was trying to talk to him. Claire, Foggy, and Maggie, could call him on his normal phone. Brett Mahoney had his burner number now, but he rarely used it. Matt thought he still wasn’t comfortable trusting a vigilante. That left Stone, who might just be returning Matt’s earlier call or who might be calling because something was urgently wrong.

Talking to Stone right now wasn’t quite the last thing Matt wanted to do, but it was on the list. Still, there was probably some unspoken rule about calling to try to beg for help and then not answering when the caller reached out later.

Reluctantly, Matt held the phone up to his ear. “Hello?”

Karen set a glass of water firmly on the counter beside him, then reached out and plucked the phone from his hand. Putting it on speaker, she held it in her hand in time for both of them to hear Stone’s greeting: “Are you all right?”

Matt was suddenly struck by how funny it was that the person who’d repeatedly stabbed him would start a conversation this way. He started laughing. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Are you drunk?”

He hastily swallowed his laughter. “No, I just—you have a history of trying to stab me, and now you’re worried about—”

“I’m not worried about you,” Stone interrupted.

Matt rolled his eyes. “The point is, I’m fine.”

“Hi, Stone,” Karen interjected.

Stone ignored her. “Why did you call earlier?”

Matt was already tired of explaining what happened. He probably should’ve thought of that before trying to break into the prison. “I…needed help. But I’m all right now, I had other people.”

“Claire?”

“And my mom. She’s not a nurse, but she knows how to keep me alive.” Matt paused. He knew that in Hell’s Kitchen, at least, Stone really didn’t have anyone except for Matt. He certainly didn’t have a whole list of contacts, most of whom could at least handle stitches.

“Good for her,” Stone said dryly. “Well, I have a present for you. I found Melvin Potter.”

A weird mix of relief and guilt churned in Matt’s stomach at the mention of the name. “Did you hurt him?”

“No.” Stone’s voice was disdainful. “Dex and I are just keeping an eye on him. Turns out the lawyer’s got some kind of military access.”

And just like that, Karen put the phone back in Matt’s hand and darted over to the couch where she opened her laptop. Matt was willing to bet she’d know Lopez’s every military connection within the hour.

In the meantime, Stone was still with Dex. “I’ll be right there,” Matt promised.

“Matt,” Karen called from the couch. “No.”

“Actually, no,” Matt amended swiftly, gritting his teeth as an ache rose in his arm and cheek. Pain meds wearing off. “Tomorrow."

“Matt,” Karen said again. “No.”

And Claire’s voice was ringing in his ear, and what if a fight broke out? Stone, Dex, and Melvin all in one room didn’t sound particularly stable and he wouldn’t be much help. “Actually…” He started to run his other hand through his hair, only to stop because even having his hand near his hypersensitive skull felt painful. Lowering his hand, he realized he had no idea when he’d be able to show up and take care of the situation. “Stone, maybe you should get out of there.”

“Oh no, I’m having far too much fun. So when are you coming?”

Karen lifted her voice. “He’s not!”

“Why not?” Stone demanded.

Matt glared up at the ceiling. The frustration in dealing with the aftermath of his own reckless decisions seemed to be directly correlated to the number of people who gave a damn about him. “I broke my arm,” he admitted.

To his immense irritation, Stone started laughing. “Did you fall off a roof?”

“Fisk,” Matt growled.

The laughter stopped. “How?”

Matt spoke very quickly. “I went to see him, and yes, it was stupid, and I’m not doing it again, so you can spare me the lecture. I got enough of that already.”

“Will it make a difference, though?”

“What’s it matter to you?” Matt demanded.

Silence. Karen slid off the couch to rejoin him in the hallway.

Matt squeezed the phone a little tighter. “Say it,” he challenged. At least, he hoped it sounded challenging. It _felt_ pitifully needy.

A delay before Stone spoke again. “How long until you’re combat-ready? I can manage both Dex and Melvin, but Dex also is trying to talk me into buying some kind of fancy, long-distance tracker to use on Melvin.” He lowered his voice. “Are snipers generally trained in tracking?”

“How would I know?” Matt muttered. “But I don’t really think Dex learned how to track people in the military.”

“Either way, that’s an option. I’d rather not camp out here with both Dex and Melvin.”

“Thought you could handle both of them.”

“But a guard is as bound to his prisoners as the prisoners are to their shackles, and you know how I feel about babysitting. So, I suppose we’re stuck with the tracker. Unless you’d rather take him out now?”

It took Matt a second to realize that Stone was asking a genuine question like he actually cared what Matt thought the best approach was.  “You said Lopez has access to a military base? Think he has access to personnel, too?”

“No way to know yet.”

Matt chewed on the inside of his cheek, trying to think. It was definitely harder than normal. “Melvin’s got a girlfriend. If I can find her, I’ll have his trust again. I think. Can you watch him until then?”

“Will you bring me coffee?”

“I’ll do it,” Karen promised.

“Karen,” Matt said. “No.”

“He’s helping us,” she insisted. “The least we can do is get him coffee.” Then she reached out and gently, gently took the phone back. She put one hand on Matt’s neck, some how massaging just the right spot so that he kind of melted into the counter, while with the other hand she turned off the speaker and held the phone to her ear. “Hi, Stone. What kind of coffee do you like?”

 

Fisk

He did not have the time or energy to spare for mourning, and that was its own form of loss which he felt keenly. But he needed to concentrate on building the strategy to annihilate those who gave him anything to mourn.

The irony was that perhaps he might have believed Murdock was responsible had Murdock simply left the matter alone. True, Murdock’s very nature was opposed to killing, despite the violence that he meted out daily. But WIlson was also exquisitely familiar with what circumstances might drive Murdock to cross his own boundaries. Namely, any attack against the vulnerable.

Vanessa, Wilson understood, had done just that.

He should have warned her. His lawyer found—and hid—evidence of her plan: she intended to stage two simultaneous attacks, one against Franklin Nelson and the other against a little girl to whom Murdock had grown attached. It should have worked. But there was unforeseen interference, apparently on both fronts. Spiderman had been at Franklin Nelson’s location, which meant Wilson could only assume that Murdock had decided to protect the girl. But even Murdock couldn’t fend off devil’s hell, yet a subsequent break-in to Elizabeth Conway’s home revealed that the dosed food had in fact been consumed. The little girl, however, had not been checked into any local hospitals or medical centers, which meant that Murdock had access to covert medical aid.

It was no surprise. It was simply infuriating.

Wilson should have warned Vanessa. Then she might have realized that attacks against his law partner and the girl could jointly drive him to the point of murder.

Yes, Wilson might have believed it, if only Murdock himself hadn’t shown up to argue the point. But he had tried so hard to convince Wilson to spare Franklin and Karen that Wilson could only assume that one of them had been responsible.

And of the two of them, Franklin was not one for using a gun.

It was strangely fitting that in destroying Karen Page—no, _Murdock_. Wilson clenched his fist, feeling his knuckles pop. It was only fitting that in destroying Karen Murdock’s life, he would avenge both Wesley and Vanessa at once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love how pretty much all the comments on the previous chapter are somehow bemoaning Matt's terrible decision-making. He's gotten better at not doing this kind of thing, but then, desperate times and all that. I promise he'll get better. :)


	5. (Brother) Let Me Be Your Shelter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Brother" by Needtobreathe.

Peter

Letting Michelle know he was Spiderman was the best decision Peter ever made and now he owed Foggy a giant cake or something. She didn’t immediately let him back on the decathlon team, said he’d have to earn his place, but he got the message that he actually had a shot.

And not just with the team. Maybe.

“Ask her out,” Ned said at the end of the school day, which was how he ended every school day now.

“Gotta practice my Spanish presentation,” Peter answered quickly. He’d given up trying to get Ned to shut up about this. He was also trying to follow Foggy’s other advice. The figure-out-how-to-be-a-human-and-not-just-a-vigilante advice. The stealthy I’m-using-my-lawyer-skills-of-persuasion-to-get-you-to-do-homeowrk-so-your-aunt-doesn’t-hate-me advice. Actually, Peter wondered if Foggy was less worried about Aunt May hating him and more worried about Aunt May grounding Peter. Since Peter kind of helped save Foggy’s life and all.

So Peter was trying to stay on top of both halves of his life. Not as easy as you’d think.

“Ask her to help you,” Ned suggested.

“Does Michelle even know Spanish?”

“Dude,” Ned said like Peter was being stupid. “She’s practically trilingual.”

“Yet another reason why she won’t look at me twice,” Peter muttered. He barely knew Spanish. Sometimes he felt like he barely knew English. He was a privileged white boy and everyone with ears knew what Michelle thought about privileged white boys.

“Who cares how many languages you know?” Ned pulled them out of earshot of some kids waiting for rides. “She knows you’re Spiderman now. Who cares if you don’t—”

“That’s my _point_ ,” Peter interrupted. “I _just_ told her I’m Spiderman. If I ask her out now, she’ll think I only told her to get her to date me.”

“You did,” Ned said dumbly.

“ _No_. I mean—” Because, yeah, that was definitely a…a thing Peter considered. “I told her because I want her to be my friend.”

Ned shifted the weight of his backpack. “Uh, no. Because _I’m_ your friend, and you didn’t tell me. I only found out because I broke into your room at the wrong time.”

“But—”

“But even though your logic dictates that you should’ve told me you’re a superhero because we’re _friends_ , you didn’t tell me jack because I’m not a hot girl.”

“No,” Peter insisted, because Ned was only kind of sort of right. “I told her because this guy told me I should.”

“What guy?”

Biting his lip, Peter started walking towards home. “Just this guy who knows about this kind of thing.”

Ned hurried to keep up. “Hang on. Just a guy who knows about superheroing?”

“Not superheroing,” Peter said quickly. “But being friends with…with people like me.”

“ _Who?_ ” Ned’s eyes were round as saucers. “Pepper Potts?”

“What? No!”

“Who?”

Peter avoided his gaze. “I can’t tell you. I’m sorry, but it’s definitely not my secret to tell.”

Ned sighed. “I miss when your biggest secret was who your crush was.”

Peter didn’t. As guilty as he felt leaving Ned out of the loop, he couldn’t stop being Spiderman and he _definitely_ couldn’t tell anyone about Matt and Foggy. Except May because she already knew. She kept wanting to bring them cookies or something because she had “no idea what else to do” to thank them for everything they did for Peter. Peter kept saying that would be weird. Although he was pretty sure that even Matt would appreciate Aunt May’s cookies.

“There should be a club,” Ned announced suddenly.

Peter couldn’t figure out what part of the conversation would’ve prompted that. “For what?”

“Superheroes and their best friends. And their girlfriends, so we can invite Michelle.”

“I’m not a superhero,” Peter spluttered. “And—and Michelle’s not my girlfriend.”

Ned just gave him a longsuffering look. “It would be a top-secret club and we’d all be sworn to secrecy. Like with the fidelius charm or something. We could all exchange advice.” He puffed his chest out a bit and his walk took on an overdramatic swagger. “I have a lot I could teach them.”

Peter thought about Matt and Foggy. They were obviously in a better place than they’d been, you know…historically. But he still got the impression that they hadn’t one hundred percent figured it out yet: how to be friends with all the Daredevil stuff. Maybe it was easier for Peter and Ned because they were younger. It probably made a difference that Peter and Ned weren’t trying to run a business together on top of everything else, too. And…Peter wasn’t sure, but he figured Foggy would be more okay with things if Matt had a healing factor. Or a spidey sense. Or, like, basic common sense.

Actually, the more Peter thought about it, the more he wondered if Foggy would wanna get to know Ned. And Ned would probably really, really like Foggy. Matt would have to trust Ned with his and Foggy’s identities, but after that….

“Yeah,” Peter said abruptly. “Let’s start a club.”

 

Stone

Camping out in Melvin’s shop seemed like the best option. It gave Stone the opportunity to keep an eye on Melvin and it provided Dex with plenty of shiny things to investigate. Collecting various tools and attaching them together, Dex seemed to be making some kind of model of a gun out of disparate scraps. He wasn’t making an actual weapon, as far as Stone could tell, so Stone let him be. Melvin, meanwhile, started tinkering with something in a corner. He wouldn’t tell Stone what it was.

“It’s not for you,” was all he’d said.

But, again, it didn’t appear to be a weapon, and it was keeping Melvin occupied. Stone told himself he could always confiscate it later if the need arose.

As night fell, Melvin pulled out a cot. Dex sat against the wall, fiddling with his contraption until he fell asleep. Stone meditated and wished he’d thought to bring coffee.

The upside was, they were both still asleep when Stone recognized the scent and sounds of Matty outside early the next morning. Trusting that between the two of them they’d notice if either Melvin or Dex woke, he carefully made his way into the alley. Matt was waiting in the faint dawn light with his glasses resting on a broken nose and his left arm secured in a disgusting-smelling sling. His other hand awkwardly held both his cane and a coffee cup. He was hastily dressed in gray sweatpants with a sweatshirt that happened to exactly match the dirty wall behind him, and his hair stood up in the back the way Giovanni’s always used to, telling Stone that he hadn’t bothered with such social niceties as grooming before sneaking out.

“I assumed you were grounded,” Stone greeted him, accepting the coffee. “You look terrible.” In the best way possible. It wasn’t just his arm and his nose that was broken—his left cheek was clearly swollen under his eye. Stone nodded approvingly. “Did you land any hits?”

“It wasn’t about landing hits.” Matty sniffed the air. “So you really do have Dex stashed away here.”

 “Don’t know what else to do with him.”

Matty raised his eyebrows. “Turn him in.”

Stone scoffed. “I’m not doing that.”

Matty looked almost caught off guard, but he didn’t ask Stone to explain himself. “Well, maybe you can figure out something else to do with him. I need your help.”

Stone sipped his coffee. It was in a takeout cup, but something about the quality of it told him Matty might’ve made it himself. Stone couldn’t taste anything that shouldn’t be there aside from the residue left by cup. No soaps, no machinery. “What else is new?”

Tightening his grip on his cane, Matty leaned forward in a motion that might have looked anxious except that his chin remained lifted, shoulders back. Instead, the posture indicated casual confidence that meant Matty knew exactly what he wanted and exactly how to get it. “I need Karen to stay at your place for a while.”

Well, Stone liked her. “If you insist.”

“And I need to be there when she first gets to your apartment.”

Stone shrugged. “Sure.”

“And you need to not be there.”

Stone felt amusement curve his lips. “Are you throwing me out of my own place?”

“I’m not finished. I also need free reign with your apartment prior to her arrival.”

Prior to her…? “Why?”

“Because your place is the least welcoming place I’ve ever been and there’s absolutely nothing beautiful about it.”

Oh, he wanted to decorate. An utter waste of resources. But, then, he was in love. “I don’t care.”

“I’m fixing your lightbulb.”

“Do what you want.”

“I’m getting actual bedding, not just your stupid sheet.”

“You’re not having sex on my bed.”

Matty was unfazed. “I’m getting flowers.”

Stone shook his head. “And that’s where I draw the line. I don’t want my apartment smelling like dead plants.”

“The flowers are non-negotiable,” Matty said flatly.

Stone rolled his eyes. “She’s not a delicate damsel, Matty. She doesn’t need flowers.”

His eyebrows knitted closer together over his glasses and his jaw tightened. “Listen to me very carefully. She’s pregnant, she doesn’t know, and I need to figure out how to tell her in a way that’s still somehow special despite the fact that we’re hiding out from Wilson Fisk who wants to kill us both.”

Stone’s train of thought was somewhat stuck. “She’s what?”

“Pregnant,” he repeated stiffly, and now for the first time he tilted his head down and away, as if expecting judgment.

Stone was still…stuck. Because pregnancy meant…a child. A family. Having a lover was one thing; even having a spouse was understandable, at least if it was someone like Karen who had demonstrated an ability to protect herself. But an _infant?_

This wasn’t supposed to happen to people like them.

But of course if anyone would get it, it would be Matty. Didn’t he get everything?

There was such a range of emotions coursing through Stone that he had no idea how to respond genuinely. Finally, he managed speech. “Congratulations.”

Matty snorted. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Stone ran a hand through his hair. “Get all the flowers you need. I’ll…find a cake. Or something.” That was how regular people reacted, he assumed.

Matty let out a startled laugh, then clamped his mouth hastily shut, nodding tightly. Stone couldn’t see his eyes, but Matty bit his lower lip and Stone noted that it was trembling.

Stone sighed. “Come here.”

Matty didn’t, naturally. So Stone took it upon himself to close the space between them, putting his arms around him—mindful of the broken arm—and held tighter against Matty’s initial movement to escape. Matty made a muffled sound that Stone couldn’t quite interpret, holding himself tensely for perhaps two more seconds before pressing himself against Stone, his whole body shaking now.

And not otherwise moving.

Stone had not… _intended_ the embrace to last this long. He didn’t even want to consider how long it had been since he’d last embraced anyone and he didn’t quite have the muscle memory for it anymore. The instant he pulled even slightly away, Matty jerked free and gripped his cane in a manner that now looked entirely anxious.

“Sorry.” Matty angled his head towards the ground. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not, but we’ll get through this.”

“…We.”

Did he really think Stone cared so little as to abandon them right now? “I won’t let him touch Karen.”

Matty shifted his weight. “I shouldn’t have let this happen, I—”

“Well, yes,” Stone agreed flippantly, “but it’s a bit late for wallowing, isn’t it? I don’t see why you’re even surprised. If there’s a way for you to make your own life harder than it needs to be, of _course_ you’ll take it.”

If blind looks could kill.

“But shouldn’t she know by now?” Stone asked. “How far along is the pregnancy?”

“Six weeks.” Matty shrugged awkwardly, reddening somewhat. “My guess is that she’s been assuming that any of the, uh, evidence is just because of stress. We haven’t really talked about it.”

That seemed healthy. “You should talk about it.”

Matt raised an eyebrow. “Hence commandeering your apartment.”

“I don’t think commandeering usually involves asking for permission.”

“Maybe not in Italy,” Matty said dismissively. “Americans are more polite.”

Even ignoring the blatant insanity of that statement, Stone was surprised. It took a moment to understand why: this was the first time he could think of when Matty referenced Stone’s background in relation to anything other than Stick.

Interesting.

 

Matt

There was such a mix of emotions rolling off Stone that it was a struggle to focus past it. Stone’s best attempts at suppressing them weren’t very effective, although Matt got the impression that Stone thought they were working just fine. Whatever Stone was feeling was so convoluted anyway that Matt couldn’t be sure what he was picking up on. Surprise, obviously, and a fight-or-flight reaction that seemed misplaced, and something that might be jealousy. But Matt wasn’t confident.

Stone cleared his throat. “As for the apartment, I can clear out, give you and Karen some space. Keep Dex with me for a while. But that won’t last.”

Matt forced the words out. “I can’t stay with her. Not long, anyway.” He could practically feel Stone’s incredulous stare, so he tried to explain. “My apartment is still the first place Fisk will look. If it’s empty, it’ll make him look that much harder. But if I’m there—”

“You’re in no condition to be bait,” Stone interrupted scathingly. “I’ll say there with Dex, make the place look occupied.”

“Your apartment is only safe as long as Fisk doesn’t know you exist,” Matt argued.

Stone sighed. “Fine. I’ll try to keep Dex and Melvin here, and you can throw yourself in Fisk’s crosshairs if you insist, and Karen will murder you if you’re still alive.”

“Stone, I…” Matt adjusted his grip on his cane. “I want you to stay with her.” How far they’d come. “Please.” He lowered his voice. “I don’t want her to be left by herself.”

It didn’t even have anything to do with whether she’d be safe. He just…didn’t want her to be alone. Not now, not for this.

Stone was quiet for a moment. “We’ll alternate watching over Melvin, then. In the meantime, Karen will stay at my place with me—assuming you can convince her—and Dex will stay with you so you can keep watch over him.”

Matt could only imagine how well that would go. “He has a history of abandonment by people he trusted. It’s this thing he does where he finds a person and turns them into his north star.” Matt curled his lip. “He did that with Fisk and Madam Gao and Vanessa, I guess. He even did that with my mom. But he has problems when those people leave him behind somehow.” Stone made a disbelieving sound, so Matt went on to clarify. “I, uh, listened to a tape of one of his therapy sessions from when he was a kid. His parents were the first ones to leave him.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that maybe passing him back and forth between us isn’t such a great idea.”

“He’ll live,” Stone said.

Matt narrowed his eyes. “He needs consistency, Stone, and you know that as well as I do.”

“What are you saying?” Stone repeated, more dangerously this time.

Matt hesitated. “Nothing.”

“Oh, no,” Stone scoffed. “I still remember when you tried to convince me that the way Strick treated us was the same as how the little girl’s dad—”

“Ella, Stone. Her name is Ella and I know you know that.”

“Just because someone has childhood trauma doesn’t make them the same us,” he insisted.

Did Stone still refuse to recognize what Stick did to them? “I’m just saying, Dex kept…kept losing the people he—”

Stone’s voice sharpened. “Did he lose his own brother? No? Because losing Giovani means far more to me than losing Stick ever did.”

Matt opened his mouth, then shut it. It was easy, sometimes, to forget that Stone used to have a brother. “That’s not what I’m saying,” he said more quietly. “But I think you and I can understand him better than…than someone else would be able to. And I think we should be careful how we handle him in light of that.”

“If you’re so eager to psychoanalyze him, you should have no problem taking care of him.” There was rustling from the room behind Stone; Stone cocked his head. “They’re waking up. Go do what you want to my apartment, and call me when you’re ready to pick up Dex.”

It sounded like they were sharing custody of a wayward kid. “Yeah,” Matt muttered. “Okay. Thanks.”

If only things were that simple.

 

Matt had never felt this nervous in his entire life. Not taking the bar, not his first day in court, not even when he’d proposed because at least then he’d known with almost complete certainty what her response would be.

But this?

Stone’s apartment was…as good as it was going to get. He’d gotten soft bedding that was, according to one salesperson corroborated by her coworker, a soft blue. He thought it was the color of her eyes. There were flowers on the windowsill and the room had been cleared of dust. He’d stocked Stone’s kitchen with her favorite things, then sat and listened for about five minutes straight while his phone read out a complicated recipe Stone texted him.

Stone didn’t give any explanation for the recipe and Matt didn’t ask. But it smelled incredible once the meal was ready.

Now he was waiting in the middle of Stone’s apartment, wishing he’d had time to shower or change into something nicer than the jeans and t-shirt he’d thrown on before going out to conquer the various stores. But his time was up; he heard her footsteps on the stairs, light and fast, intentional and curious. She was wearing flats and she smelled like cigarettes and strangers. She’d been investigating something.

He heard her hand on the knob, turning it.

And there it was: her heart beating with the softer flutter of the tiny heartbeat underneath. For a moment, he forgot to move or do anything at all, just standing there, transfixed by the sounds. He couldn’t believe he got to hear it, couldn’t believe he’d get to hear it for another eight months inside of her. After Conway, it’d been weeks before he could listen to a heartbeat without _remembering_ , and then the memory of devil’s hell brought the nightmares back, but he realized he could listen to these two hearts forever.

The door opened, followed by a small gasp. “This is different.”

He tried to answer; the words died in his throat so he tried again. “Hey, Karen.” His voice cracked over her name like he was thirteen. He swallowed quickly.

“Wow.” She was walking around the room, already poking into things. “Are those _flowers?_ ”

“Well, they told me they were when I bought them.”

He imagined she was glaring at him, but then she went to touch the bed. “This is new.”

“Trust me, all he had before was an old sheet.”

She inhaled. “Did you make food?”

“Uh, yeah. Stone, uh…Stone helped.”

“Italian?” she asked slyly.

“Yeah, let me…” He trailed off, ducking past her into the kitchen and returning with the plates and bowls. “I, uh, forgot he doesn’t have a table, so we can just…sit on the floor?”

“Matt Murdock,” she said slowly, “is this a date?”

Ha. Yes? Maybe? What was the protocol here? He just aimed a grin in her direction that he hoped was more stable than he felt and went back into the kitchen to get water. Sparkling for her, flat for him. He actually liked drinking carbonated beverages except that it was almost impossible to concentrate past the fizzing on his tongue, and he definitely needed to be able to concentrate.

Karen had already lowered herself onto the ground opposite him, legs tucked underneath her. “So. A date?”

“Yeah,” he said carelessly. “Let’s call it that.”

“This isn’t a date.” Suspicion tinged her voice as she accepted the drink. “What’s going on? And what, did you forget the alcohol?”

He sat down opposite her, which made it a lot harder to hide how his left leg was vibrating nervously. “I just, um…”

“When is Stone coming back?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Is this, like, a second honeymoon or something? Because I kind of feel like we have other things to worry about right now.”

His stomach flipped. “I know,” he said quietly.

Reaching across, she put her hand over his. “Not that I’m complaining. Just…tell me what’s going on?”

He was going to ruin this. This was supposed to be _special_. And it really felt like this kind of thing was supposed to be her job. That wasn’t the point. The point was…he was going to ruin this spectacularly.

“Matt,” she whispered. “You’re trembling.”

He focused on her heartbeat. Couldn’t decide if listening to the other one was helpful.

“Is this about what happened the other day?”

Well, it was certainly _connected_ , but she was already upset enough about that—both because of what he’d done and because he’d dodged her questions—that it seemed best not to admit to the connection right now. “I heard something the other night.”

“Bad?”

“Not bad. Uh…actually, it was wonderful. It _is_ wonderful.” He stood up and held out his right hand, moving around the meal to pull her to her feet.

Her heartrate was speeding up, but she kept silent—not interrogating him, giving him time to figure out how to say this.

Just for one second, he wasn’t going to think about Fisk or Dex or the fact that they were hiding in Stone’s apartment. Just for this moment, he was going to enjoy this. He smiled without any effort.  “It’s my new favorite sound.”

She gave a miffed snort. “I thought you always said my heartbeat was your favorite.”

“It is,” he said earnestly. “There’s just…another one, too. Another, um…another heartbeat.”

And now hers was racing in time with his.

He pulled her a little closer and slid his hand down to rest on her stomach.

She clapped both her hands to her mouth and said something that might have been his name. He tried to say hers back, but couldn’t work out the right syllables. They both kind of gave up on talking as he slid his hand up her body to the back of her neck, tangling up in her hair and drawing her closer while she moved her hands from her mouth to either side of his face. Their kiss glowed with love that overwhelmed the electric fear he could almost taste from her lips.

“I love you,” he whispered against her mouth. “Karen, you’re so amazing. _This_ …this is amazing.”

He felt her tears against his skin as she buried her face in his neck, and his heart clenched for a moment, but then he felt her smile. As she pressed closer, the smiling gave way to shaky laughter.

“What?” he murmured.

“It’s just…” She shook her head dazedly against him. “I don’t feel grown up enough for this. What—we’re gonna be _parents_ , what are we _doing?_ ”

Was it terrible to be relieved that she was kind of scared, too? “Figuring it out. Together.”

“Parents,” she breathed. “A _kid_.”

He just nodded. Part of him wanted to rush into the logistics—how they were gonna _deal_ with this. But it seemed more important to wait, to be patient, to give her time to adjust to this just as she always gave him time to process when he needed it.

She was also much, much faster at processing. She pulled back to look at him. “Not that I’m not thrilled, but this isn’t the best timing imaginable, is it?”

“I’m sorry,” he said softly.

“Not your fault.” He heard the smirk in her voice, and maybe it was a bit forced, but at least she wasn’t panicking. She was so much stronger. “Well, not _only_ your fault.”

“I’ve been thinking.” He took a deep breath. “You don’t…you don’t have to agree to this, obviously. But.” He pressed his lips together for a moment. “I’d like you to stay here. With Stone.”

“What, in his apartment?” She looked around and he could practically hear her putting the pieces together, figuring out that he hadn’t fixed the place up just for this conversation.

“It’s not like any of us are working from the office anyway, but it doesn’t matter if Fisk decides to go after you or me first—our apartment isn’t safe. But I don’t think Fisk even knows Stone exists.”

“And you?” she asked more sharply. “Where will you be?”

“Our place. _Not_ as bait or something,” he went on quickly. “But Stone and I already worked it out.” Sensing her growing frustration, he lowered his gaze. “It’s not that I don’t think you can take care of yourself. You’ve proved that. But Dex is _insane_ and this place…” He gestured at the apartment. “It’s so small. He could get ahold of a weapon and you’d be dead in an instant.”

“But Stone wouldn’t. Or you wouldn’t.”

“We have training and we have our senses and you don’t have either. I’m sorry, but it’s a fact. And…and it’s not just you that’s at risk now.” Although it wasn’t like he’d be any happier about having her around Desk if it was only her life in danger, and they both knew it.

Her arms folded tightly across her chest. “That’s not fair, Matt.”

“Believe me, I _know_. I’m just…” He exhaled sharply. “I’m trying to do this the right way for once.”

“And the right way is splitting us up?” she challenged.

“The right way is letting other people help us if it means keeping you safe.” He swallowed. “Both of you. Please, Karen. Let him help us.”

“I hate being the thing that has to be protected.”

“Does it help to say that _you’re_ not the thing we’re protecting, you’re just…stuck with the thing we’re protecting?”

“Ugh.” Slumping forward, she rested her forehead against his shoulder and sniffled. “Wow.”

“What?” he asked hesitantly.

“It’s just…I guess we have to actually be responsible now, huh?”

He grinned despite himself. “I’m always responsible.”

Recent evidence suggested otherwise, but she was kind enough not to point it out. She did, however, suddenly push at his chest, push him back. He barely avoided the food. “Hang on! That’s not _fair_.”

He blinked. “What isn’t?”

“How come you get to know first?”

He blinked again. “I don’t follow?”

“I’m supposed to tell you! I had all these ideas for whenever it happened because I knew I had to beat your stupid bathroom proposal—”

“Hey,” he protested.

“—and it was gonna be _epic_ , Matt, and I was gonna film it and we were gonna go viral on Youtube—”

“I’m sorry, you’re saying this kid is just a ploy to be internet famous?”

Her hands landed on his chest again. “I’m _saying_ that I’ve been _robbed_ , Murdock. Robbed.” But instead of pushing him away, her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt.

He opened his mouth.

“If you’re about to make a stupid lawyer joke, you can shut your mouth right now.”

He grinned. “Actually, I was going to say that this is larceny at best. Robbery would imply coercion of some kind, or—” He shut up as her lips locked onto his.

“Fine,” she sighed against his mouth. “But I get to tell Foggy.”

“Foggy already knows,” he said without thinking, distracted by the taste of her.

But she stiffened, pulling back.

There was danger there, so he rushed to explain. “He was with me after I fought Fisk, and he was freaking out and I was concussed—”

She spoke slowly. “Let me guess, your mom knows too?”

Red alert. Red alert. “I needed her advice,” Matt said helplessly.

“Is there anyone who _doesn’t_ know?”

Matt thought desperately. “You, uh…you can tell Brett, if you want.”

Pressing her hands to her mouth, she mumbled something incoherent.

“The Valliers don’t know,” he offered.

“I notice you’re not mentioning either Stone or Claire. Are you seriously telling me that you told your weird Italian ninja friend that _I’m pregnant_ before you told me?”

On rethinking things, there were probably other ways he could’ve convinced Stone to give up his apartment without revealing this. “I’m so sorry.”

“You,” she breathed, “are so, so stupid.”

He rested his forehead against hers. “Yeah,” he murmured. “I’m hoping the kid gets your intelligence.”

The kid would be unstoppable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just think Ned will be as good for Foggy as Foggy is for Peter.  
> And a lot of you were (justifiably) upset that Karen didn't know yet, so I hope this makes up for the wait!


	6. Let Me Guess, You Want an Apology

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "Let You Down" by NF (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrVNAq7nSTQ).

Matt

Much as he would’ve liked to stay with Karen in Stone’s apartment forever, there was a plan to follow. Returning to his place, Matt resigned himself to being stuck with Dex for the foreseeable future. Or, at least, until Stone or Karen did something that threw the plan out the window. Since the plan was kind mediocre, Matt wasn’t too upset about the possibility. As long as Stone kept Melvin from doing whatever Fisk wanted Melvin to do, and as long as Karen stayed safe (which, to be fair, was a big assumption), Matt couldn’t complain.

Well, he _shouldn’t_ complain. He did anyway. “You do realize how much easier this would be if we threw Dex back in prison, right?” he argued on the phone with Stone, waiting for Stone to escort Dex to his apartment.

“He doesn’t belong there.”

Matt’s cheek ached. He rubbed at his temple, since he couldn’t exactly rub the place that hurt. “He’s a murderer, Stone. That’s why we _have_ prisons.”

“He won’t do anyone any good in prison.”

“He won’t do anyone any harm in prison,” Matt corrected.

Stone sighed into the phone. “Look, I know that throwing people in jail is kind of your thing—”

“I’m a _defense_ lawyer,” Matt said testily.

“—but he’s got too much potential to waste behind bars.”

Was that really what this was about? _Potential?_ Matt started pacing around his living room. “You can’t fix him, Stone. You’ll just make it worse if you try.”

A condescending edge slipped into Stone’s voice. “I’m not trying to fix him.”

Then what did Stone think he was doing? “I’m just saying, you’re putting a lot of lives at risk just for the sake of this experiment.”

“You don’t need my permission to fetch your precious law enforcement,” Stone snapped.

Matt glared at whatever was in front of him. True, there was nothing stopping him from turning Dex in on his own. But it wasn’t an exaggeration to say Matt’s trust in the prison system, already shaky, had faltered even more in light of Fisk’s escape and then Dex’s, facilitated by first Madam Gao and then Vanessa. Better to keep Dex under the control of either Matt or Stone. That was the logical rational for agreeing to Stone’s idea, anyway. (There was also part of Matt that wanted to find a way to play along with Stone if at all possible.) “How exactly did you get Dex to cooperate with you?”

“I outmaneuvered him a few times,” Stone answered casually, which Matt reinterpreted to include more violence. “Threatened to tear out his stitches, that kind of thing. Reminded him who was the better fighter. Think you can handle that?”

“I can handle it,” Matt snapped. “Fine. I’ll deal with him.”

“No need to be so grumpy about it.”

“The only reason he’s not in prison right now is for your sake,” Matt reminded him pointedly.

“The only reason he’s alive right now is for your sake,” Stone retorted.

“Great, so we’re both miserable.”

“Lovely,” Stone said. “I’ll see you in ten.”

Matt lowered the phone with a groan. The thing was, Dex was skilled. In close combat Matt could beat him, but not always. Too often Matt and Dex’s fights ended because one of them escaped the other, not because Matt actually subdued Dex. And now Matt’s arm was broken. So was his face, although that didn’t really affect his ability to throw a punch, did it?

He was just…not at his best, was the thing.                                                                                                       

He briefly considered grabbing the tape he’d stolen from Dex’s apartment, using it as leverage somehow. Maybe it would even calm Dex down if something went wrong. Or maybe the fact that Matt stole it in the first place would just make Dex angrier. The rest of the tapes had been confiscated by the police, and if Matt had the time or the energy, maybe he’d look into any fourth amendment violations. He’d definitely look into the fact that those tapes were under psychotherapist-patient privilege. But police were still looking for Dex. If Matt showed up and started trying to get ahold of Dex’s therapy tapes, he could find himself turned into a suspect. Again.

No, Matt could only do so much to help Dex. For now, that apparently meant hiding Dex from the police. Matt tried not to think about the illegality of it.

Speaking of illegal. Matt grabbed his glasses as he heard Dex’s footsteps, accompanied by Stone, on the stairs outside his apartment.

“Have fun,” Stone said as soon as Matt opened the door. Matt wasn’t sure if the words were meant for him or Dex.

Dex sounded startled. “You have a dog.”

Matt ignored this, keeping Frank back with his foot. “Don’t lose track of Melvin, Stone,” he warned.

“Won’t be a problem.” There was a grin in Stone’s voice. He was enjoying this. “Call if there’s trouble.”

“You call if there’s trouble,” Matt muttered under his breath as Sone traipsed back down the stairs. He turned towards Dex, who was standing stiffly with his legs slightly apart and his arms folded across his chest. A slightly defensive stance with a low center of gravity.

Matt remembered when he’d tried to hunt Fisk down back at the presidential hotel. Dex stopped him. Asked to see his room key. Was basically the reason Matt hadn’t crossed paths with Fisk sooner. Matt was certain that if he had, either he or Fisk would’ve ended up dead. So, really, he owed Dex.

“You done staring at me?” Dex asked.

“Never started.” Matt held out a hand. “Matt Murdock.”

Dex didn’t move. “I know.”

Letting his hand fall back to his side, Matt offered a thin smile. He didn’t want to be smiling at Dex—the man who would’ve killed Foggy, Ella, and Karen. The man who in fact killed Father Lantom and Ray Nadeem, not to mention countless other innocents. But…punching Dex in the face wouldn’t bring back any of the people Matt lost.

And Matt was still a defense lawyer, and a Catholic. He at least tried to be the kind of person who could see the humanity even in murderers.

(It was a bit easier now, having strayed so close to that line himself.)

“I assume Stone told you what the plan is?” Matt asked. If it could be called a plan. He held the door open, allowing Dex to step through—much to Frank’s delight.

“But he didn’t tell me why all this is necessary.” Dex seemed to be trying to ignore Frank. Not an easy feat.

Matt shrugged. “You don’t need to know.”

“Where’s your wife?” Dex stuffed his hands in his pockets, the better to keep Frank from licking his fingers.

“She’s not part of this.”

“What happened to your arm? And your face?”

Mat just turned around and walked into the kitchen and got himself a beer. On second thought, he grabbed another for Dex.

Following after him, Dex accepted it. “You can pay for this place just with your lawyering? Or maybe you were working with Fisk after all.”

Did he ever shut up? Matt took a long, casual sip of his drink. “Does anyone still call you Benjamin?”

Dex’s teeth snapped together with a _click_.

“Who was the last person who called you that?” Matt pushed.

“I like Dex better,” he said flatly.

“Sure you do.” Matt crossed the room to open the closet. Hanging above the locked chest was a collection of leashes. As soon as his fingers touched one, Frank started frolicking at his feet. He’d trained her not to bark every time she realized they were going out, but he didn’t really mind when she jumped, her paws brushing his hips as she prodded excitedly at him. Matt raised his voice. “Come on, Dex.”

“We going somewhere?” Dex said it like he was trying to sound bored, but there was an anxious edge underneath.

“I think it’s pretty clear that neither of us wants to sit in this apartment together.” Clipping the leash onto Frank’s collar, he started down the hallway, waiting for Dex to move past him outside before locking the door. Then Matt stepped up right behind Dex. “You mess with me now, Dex, and I’ll have you back in police custody in under an hour.”

“Maybe I’ll just tell them who you really are,” Dex said out of the side of his mouth.

Matt kept the jolt of anxiety locked away somewhere safe. “You think anyone would take you seriously with your psych record?’

Dex flinched and his knuckles cracked as his hands formed fists at his sides. “I’m not crazy.”

“I’m not the one saying it.” No, that would be his precious Dr. Mercer. “Come on.”

Having Dex talk to Maggie was only one reason to take him to the church. Matt was also curious how Dex would handle being in this church—the scene of one of his murders. It was more than morbid curiosity; it was a test. Besides, if Dex snapped, it would give Matt the perfect excuse to send him to prison. Stone already stripped Dex of anything he could throw, and Matt knew the church well enough that he thought he could keep Dex far enough away from anything he could weaponize that Matt could block him if he tried something. If something did set Dex off, Matt told himself he could contain the danger.

After about ten minutes of walking in tense silence, Matt started laying the foundation. “How old were you when you lost your parents?”

Dex’s head snapped up.

“But you didn’t miss them,” Matt said when he didn’t answer.

“How do you know?”

Reminding Dex that he’d listened in on those tapes probably wouldn’t go so well. “I lost my parents when I was nine. Didn’t know my mom, but my dad was a good man. Makes it pretty obvious that your dad wasn’t like that. Or your mom.”

“Don’t see that it makes much difference either way. All that matters is they’re gone.”

It made a world of difference, actually. “You don’t have anyone else.”

Dex rolled his shoulders back. “Don’t need anyone else.”

“What about Vanessa?”

“What’re you trying to get me to say? She’s dead.” He gave a fierce nod. “Least that means she can’t leave me twice.”

That was one way of thinking of it. “What about Madam Gao?”

Dex’s voice was laced with tension. “Someone cut her head off.”

Did he realize that Stone was the one who killed her? “Do you have _any_ north stars left alive?”

“Shut up about the north stars,” he growled. “You listen to a few of my tapes, you think you know me, but you don’t, you never—”

Matt swung around to face him on the sidewalk. “Who do you have, Dex? Who do you have that's still alive?”

“No one!” Dex spat, temperature spiking. “Is that what you wanna hear?”

“No one,” Matt echoed softly. “Well, that might not be true.” He turned back around. “Follow me.”

Dex hesitated, but he didn’t have much of a choice, and how could he ignore potential like that? He fell into step behind Matt. “Where’re we going?”

“My church,” Matt said calmly. “You recognize it.”

Dex stopped walking. “What’re we doing here?”

Matt pressed his lips together for a moment. “Look, I realize you didn’t appreciate everything she told you, but Sister Maggie cares about you.” He clicked his tongue when Frank strained to follow the scent of children who’d been playing on the sidewalk in front of the church. “Honestly, she probably cares about you more than she should.”

Then he stopped, listening more carefully through the wall. Inside, Maggie was working with a group of kids. One of the other nuns was teaching the kids a song, but Maggie was holding a younger on in his arms. Matt tilted his head at Dex. “Can you hear them?”

“Singing,” Dex reported uncertainly.

“Sister Maggie’s in there. I could ask her to come meet us, if you want. She might not, though. She’s busy.”

“If I want,” Dex repeated, like he was confused that he was being given a choice.

Maybe he was.

“They’re singing,” Dex said again.

“Yeah. I can hear it.” One of the little boys was harmonizing all on his own.

Dex stuffed his hands into his pockets. “We should come back later.”

Matt studied him, but he didn’t know Dex well enough to be sure what signals he was picking up on. Tension, obviously. Embarrassment, maybe. No guilt, though. Guilt was too much to ask for. Matt shrugged. “Come on, then. My dog needs to practice parkour.”

“Wait, what?”

 

“This is parkour?” Dex asked skeptically.

Matt listened with approval as Frank scrambled up the slide at the empty playground. “She’s getting better.” Franks tumbled down the stairs, sending wood chips flying, and darted to Matt’s side for a treat before dashing back to try again. “Can I ask you something?”

Dex nodded, then coughed. “I nodded.”

Matt slipped his good hand into his pocket. “Do you regret it? Putting on the suit. The shootings. The deaths.”

Dex rubbed at the back of his neck. “I’m supposed to say yes. That’s what you wanna hear, isn’t it?”

“Just the truth,” Matt said quietly.

A full minute passed. Frank had time to grab another treat before Dex answered. “I don’t know.”

There was no lie in his heartbeat, which meant he was broken. He was broken and being passed back and forth between two half-broken vigilantes wasn’t going to do a thing to fix him. If anything, Matt and Stone would just make him worse. Matt should come up with some excuse. Give Dex back to Stone, get some space just so he could call the police. Maybe whatever psychological care Dex was getting while awaiting trial wasn’t exactly what he needed, but at least there’d be four walls around Dex when he snapped.

And no one could argue that Dex didn’t _deserve_ to be locked up.

Matt’s burner phone vibrated. So many people knew that number now, he really should figure out if there was a way to customize vibration patterns with different contacts. As it was, Matt just held the phone to his ear and took a guess, since pretty much everyone else would’ve opted to call him on his regular phone. “Stone?”

“Where are you two?” Stone asked in greeting.

No way was Matt admitting that they were at a dog park. “Rooftop.”

“Which rooftop? I’m coming to pick up Dex.”

“Are we sharing custody now?”

“Karen needs to see you. Nothing’s wrong,” he added swiftly. “But she’s adamant.” He paused. “It seems only fair to warn you that your law partner is also on his way.”

“Is it about a case?”

“I don’t believe so,” Stone said carefully.

Matt tipped his head back in frustration. Whatever was about to happen was definitely not something he’d enjoy. But he was clearly being _summoned_ , and if he tried to put this off, his best friends would find another way to ambush him. “Yeah, fine. Meet us by Melvin’s shop. I’m bringing my dog to your apartment, by the way. Hope you don’t mind.”

 

The two heartbeats were waiting for him. Three, counting the little one. All fast, two nervous. Matt braced himself.

Might as well get this over with.

He entered the apartment and let go of Frank, who gave Foggy and Karen each a perfunctory lick before starting her investigation of the room. It wasn’t as clean as it had been when he’d fixed it up for Karen, but that didn’t necessarily feel like a bad thing. It felt…lived-in. Like the space was finally starting to realize its potential. It was oddly encouraging.

Not so encouraging were the two individuals waiting for him.

Stepping through the doorway, Matt propped his cane in the corner. “What’s going on?”

“We need to talk.” Foggy’s voice was already tense where he stood by the window.

Clearly, this was going to be so much fun. Matt shoved his good hand into his pocket and raised his eyebrows. “Good. I agree.”

“About you,” Foggy said.

Great. “I’m fine,” Matt said automatically, even though he had no idea whether that point was actually at issue here. Based on Foggy’s subsequent snort, he assumed that it was.

“Matt,” Karen said slowly, getting up off the bed but not moving closer. “Foggy told me you broke into Fisk’s cell.”

She’d known his injuries were somehow from Fisk, but she hadn’t known that it was Matt’s fault. Matt wished he hadn’t set his cane aside so he could clench his hands around. An arc of pain flashed through his left arm as he tightened his fist. He leveled a glare at Foggy. “I was going to tell her.”

“He also told me you did it because I’m pregnant.”

That was an _extreme_ oversimplification, but Matt doubted either of them would believe him if he tried to explain. He maintained his glare at Foggy. “I was _going_ to _tell her_.”

“When?” Karen demanded.

Well, it didn’t matter now, did it? He’d already disappointed them both. “I’m sorry, Karen. I should’ve told you right away, but I was—”

“You decided to go off and one-man army it and get turned into Matt goo in Fisk’s cell!” Foggy cut in.

Like there’d been a choice besides going in alone. “What was I supposed to do, Foggy? Ask you to go in with me?”

Foggy sighed loudly. “If you’d come to us with your brilliant plan to go fight Fisk in jail, you know what we would’ve said?”

“Not to do it,” Matt answered flatly. “In which case Fisk could easily decide that Karen is the more likely suspect than I am, and she could already be dead.”

“Are you dead?” Karen asked. “You’re not? Okay, so we can agree that Fisk thinking that someone killed Vanessa doesn’t automatically result in that person’s death.”

That wasn’t the _point_. “I can’t risk that with you. Either of you.”

“Backing up a second,” Foggy interjected. “If you’d come to us with your brilliant plan, I actually might not have said _not_ to do it—”

“Matt doesn’t have to take responsibility for my decisions,” Karen protested hotly.

Foggy ignored her. “Matt, I actually happen to think that your goal makes sense, so if you’d come to _me_ but not Karen, I might not have said not to do it, but I definitely would’ve made some suggestions about how to do it better. If the whole point was to make Fisk think you’re responsible, you know what else would’ve done the trick?”

Matt was suddenly grateful for his glasses, like maybe if either one of them could see his eyes they’d be able to tell that making Fisk think he was responsible hadn’t actually been the whole point.

“A letter,” Foggy announced. “A phone call. I’d suggest a carrier pigeon, because you know I hate pigeons, but honestly I don’t think even a pigeon would deserve what you went through.” Here Foggy waved his hand at Matt’s face. “And I’m pretty sure Fisk would’ve wrung its neck just for being the messenger.”

Embracing the pain in his arm as the tension rose, Matt took a step back and tried not to feel like he was backing himself into a corner. “Sorry. I’ll think it through better next time.”

Foggy threw his hands up in frustration. “Or you could let us think with you! You’re not alone, Matt, so stop _acting_ like it.”

“I’m not.” He jerked his chin at Karen. “We’re letting Stone help us. Karen’s staying with him, at least until—”

“I don’t know,” she interrupted with deadly calm. “Maybe I shouldn’t.”

He turned towards her. “Excuse me?”

“I mean, if you’re gonna pull stupid stunts like running after Fisk, maybe you shouldn’t be left unsupervised.”

He took a deep breath. “Karen. My apartment’s not safe if Fisk is—”

“ _Our_ apartment,” she corrected sharply. “So, what, you expect me to just hide away while the big boys take care of things?”

Matt spoke through gritted teeth. “I expect you to run around and be just as reckless as I am, but I expect you to at least _sleep_ somewhere that doesn’t have both our names attached to it. We agreed to this literally yesterday.”

“Before I knew you were this stupid!”

“Karen,” Foggy interjected with a hand on her arm. “Maybe hold off on insulting his intelligence and let’s all discuss this like grownups, all right?

Folding her arms across her chest, Karen didn’t answer.

“Same team, right?” Foggy pressed. He made a sweeping motion with his hand. “All of us. Same team.”

That was rich, given that Foggy and Karen set up this whole ambush. Matt closed his eyes. No, it wasn’t an ambush. It was an expression of care and he really should be able to appreciate that kind of thing after all this time. He angled his face away. “I’m sorry,” he said honestly. “I should’ve talked to you. Both of you.”

Karen’s voice softened. “Why didn’t you?”

Because he was scared. Because he wanted to just…just solve the problem so they could move on to enjoying this new little life, the tiny heartbeat he could hear beating so much faster than any of the other heartbeats in the room. Because he was sick of living in Fisk’s shadow.

“Matt.” Foggy put his hand on Matt’s uninjured shoulder and squeezed. “Trust us. Try.”

Leaning a little into Foggy’s touch, Matt used his finger to draw an _X_ over his heart.

 

Karen

She figured out how to enjoy being alone when she first moved to New York, and as much as she wanted Matt around, as much as she actually appreciated Stone’s company, she was glad to find herself alone once Matt and Foggy left She pulled her laptop out of her bag, curled up on the new bedsheets, and paused for a second just to think about this moment. She actually felt safe, which was pretty incredible given the circumstances. And even though she couldn’t feel the heartbeat…she wasn’t actually alone.

“Hey,” she whispered to her stomach. “Just a few months, right?”

No response yet. What would it feel like when the baby started moving?

“You don’t need to worry. Your dad’s pretty smart when he’s not being stupid, and Foggy’s smart, and I’m brilliant. We’ll have this whole mess wrapped up before it’s time for you to get here. I promise, okay?” She kissed her fingers and touched her fingers to her belly which…really didn’t make sense, but it felt right, somehow.

Okay, enough sentimentality. She had work to do. But as soon as she opened to a news website, she saw him. Again. It was like he was _stalking_ her from the grave. Yet another article about the wonderful life James Wesley lived.

She closed the tab and closed her eyes, but that didn’t stop the flash of the gun going off from flaring across her vision. Seven times.

Karen’s eyes snapped open as she grabbed her phone. She got all the way to the contacts screen, her thumb hovering over Ellison’s slot, before she stopped. Asking him why everyone was suddenly obsessed with James Wesley would just…would just draw attention to her. She had to keep her head down.

But there was another name just above Ellison’s in her contacts list. _Dad_. She swallowed, blinked, pressed the button, and held the phone to her ear.

Listened to it ring. And ring. And ring.

She couldn’t handle leaving a voicemail. She was about to just hang up when she heard his voice.

“Karen?”

She lifted her chin. “Hi, Dad.”

“Something wrong?”

“No, I…thank you for coming down for the wedding. I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you more.”

“You were busy,” he sighed. He always sighed when he talked to her.

“I wanted to, I just…it was crazy. Things were crazy.”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me, Karen.”

Because it wouldn’t make a difference anyway. “But I’m glad you came. I really am. Did you…did you enjoy it?”

“The wedding?” he clarified.

Never mind. She didn’t want to hear about it if he didn’t. “New York.”

“Well, it’s not Vermont,” he said.

Didn’t she know it. “How…how’re you feeling?” Whatever sickness he’d had—some horrible flu thing that seemed to only exist in Vermont—had gone, but left him feeling weak. Dependent on the kindness of strangers in that tiny community.

“I’m doing all right. Is that all you called to ask about?”

She stared up at the ceiling. “Actually, I…I wanted to tell you something. I’m…I’m…”

“Yes?”

What if he didn’t care? “Never mind. I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

“Is that everything?”

“Yeah,” she said hastily. “Bye, Dad.”

_Click._

She dropped the phone in her lap and rubbed at her stinging eyes. Stupid pregnancy hormones, that was all it was. What did she expect, anyway? Shoving her hair behind her ears, Karen opened her laptop again. She might as well be useful as long as she was stuck here.

Was it weird that she missed Stone?

But he was taking care of Melvin and that was something she could probably help with. Predictably, there was nothing on social media to clue Karen in as to where Betsy might be. Karen couldn’t even figure out who Betsy’s family was. The woman was smart, keeping her private life off the internet like that.

Except. Nothing was really private anymore.

Karen started off by hunting down Betsy’s contact information, which was easy enough to find since probation officers were searchable on public record. After finding Betsy Beatty under Melvin’s name, she tried calling Betsy, but wasn’t surprised when there was no answer. Maybe Betsy just didn’t have her work phone on her, or maybe Betsy knew to be suspicious of unknown numbers right now.

Fine. Karen turned to a favorite database—one of these days, Ellison was going to take back her access code—and hunted through the grantee index of property records until she found property that had been conveyed to Betsy in a lease.

“There you are,” she whispered.

Well, it was possible that Betsy was no longer staying there. But Karen plugged Betsy’s name, phone number, and address into a public records search, and up popped a list of Betsy’s past addresses. From there, a simple search of property parcels revealed who owned those various parcels at a different times. Most of the properties had been leased to Betsy Beatty, but eventually Karen found one that belonged to John and Marlene Beatty. Checking their names in a grantor index revealed that they’d granted that house to someone else, but a grantee index revealed the last house that had been granted to them—the house where they were presumably staying. Even if Betsy hadn’t gone to live with them, they might know where their daughter was.

Karen smiled grimly as she wrote down the address.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise there's plot here, but this story is turning into a giant character study so I really hope you guys like that kind of thing!
> 
> And yeah, my property class has really highlighted just how easy it is to find people if you know where to look.


	7. Quiet My Soul

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "Slow Down" by Jonathan Ogden (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4gK8TnCplA).  
> Disclaimer: googling stuff about Catholic confession doesn't change that fact that idk what I'm talking about here.

Stone

Stone was on double duty for the day (again). Watching both Dex and Melvin was neither easy nor enjoyable, but Matty had called to awkwardly ask if Stone wouldn’t mind, explaining that Ella Vallier’s parents invited him and his partner for dinner. Karen had also been invited, but she said she didn’t quite feel up to any social interaction that revolved around food.

“I can say no,” Matty said quickly. “But they’re worried.”

About themselves? About Matty? “Go get dinner. I don’t care.”

It was a lucky thing that Matty couldn’t hear heartbeats over the phone because Stone would have a difficult time explaining why that particular lie was a lie. He _did_ care. He cared that Matty had a mother and a wife and a _child_ and _friends_. He cared that Matty had _backup medical care_ when he broke his arm and his face and Stone hadn’t been there to help. He cared that Matty was a vigilante who got dinner invitations.

But there was no point in complaining about any of that now. Besides, he got to play with this very cool tracker that Dex apparently knew how to find off one of many suspicious websites. It wasn’t technically the black market, but Dex insisted that you could find basically anything if you knew the right people. Which Dex apparently did.

As their contact schlepped back down the alley, Stone took another look at the tiny pill-shaped cylinder in the dirty plastic baggie. “Would’ve been cheaper to get a dog tracking implant,” Stone pointed out.

“Those don’t work in real-time. This does.” Dex leaned closer. “Snipers didn’t usually have to work with these, but I had one mission where I had to get this guy to swallow it. Like a pill. Tracked him back to his hideout so I could take out all his buddies. That was crazy. Like shooting up a beehive.”

“You have much experience with shooting beehives?”

Dex shrugged. “It’s fun.” He held out his hand. “Can I see?”

Stone offered him the tracker, but the second Dex’s fingers closed over he tracker, his pulse skyrocketed, heart hammering in his chest. He dropped the tracker like it was lit with flames and reached for his belt as though grasping for a gun.

“Dex!” Stone barked.

He froze. “Yessir?”

Stone carefully picked up the tracker. “What happened?”

Dex blinked, then blinked again, then dropped his hand back to his side, closed his eyes, and let out a long breath. “Sorry. Forgot.”

A flashback? Just how traumatic was Dex’s experience with shooting up that beehive? Stone studied him, but Dex seemed perfectly normal now—well, normal for Dex—as he returned to the shop, stalked up behind Melvin, and struck him on the back of the head. Stone just managed to catch Melvin before his skull cracked on the floor.

“Thanks,” Dex said blandly. “You got a knife?”

Using his teeth, Stone ripped open the wrapping for one of his antiseptic wipes, then made a deep cut in Melvin’s arm. He tucked the tracker into place, stitched the slit together again, and wiped away the blood.

“Easier than getting someone to swallow it,” Dex remarked while Stone synced the GPS in the tracker with his phone. “Can I see?”

“No.” It was Stone’s phone, for one thing. For another, he didn’t want to risk setting Dex off again. He didn’t know what happened back there, but whatever it was, it was far outside the scope of what Stone was prepared to handle.

 

Foggy

“Been a while, hasn’t it?” Foggy asked.

Matt leaned on his cane. “I guess?”

They were standing in front of the Valliers’ house. Technically, Matt was standing in front of a hand-made welcome hedgehog that definitely would’ve looked terrifying if any kid other than Ella tried to make it. It was a shame Matt couldn’t see it.

“I mean…you sure you’re okay with this?” When Matt looked confused, Foggy elaborated. “You’ve been extra stressed recently…” That was putting it mildly, “and the last time you were around the Valliers wasn’t exactly a party…” Since Foggy was willing to be that Matt hadn’t been back since Ella got hurt, “and, you know, Micah’s kinda prickly, so…”

“Micah’s not prickly,” Matt said.

Foggy blinked. “Since when?”

“Since…since…we’ve been talking.”

“About what?” Foggy asked carefully. Matt was…not blushing, but he was definitely fidgeting.

“I, ah, told him that I had a background similar to Ella’s.”

That could mean several things. “In which respect?”

Matt pursed his lips “Pretty much all of them. Growing up at St. Agnes’, and, uh, the training I got from Stick. So Micah’s been asking for advice on…things. And I’ve been training her more about how to fight so she might calm down her elementary school vigilantism.”

Foggy failed to see how training her to fight would dissuade her from fighting, but the more important thing was…wow, Matt was apparently enjoying a lot of human interaction with someone who wasn’t Foggy, Karen, or Maggie. “That’s really cool, buddy.”

“Well, I’ve gotten a lot of homemade dinners out of it,” he said casually.

“Wait. Are you telling me this is some kind of… _friendship?_ Like, with all of them? Not just Ella.”

A small smile played around his lips. “I can’t think of another classification.”

“But the best friend slot is taken,” Foggy said flatly. “You know that, right? Taken.”

“I dunno, maybe there should be an election.” Before Foggy could protest, Matt reached out to jab the doorbell.

As soon as Maeva opened the door, Ella bolted past her legs and Matt quickly shifted until his busted arm was behind Foggy, causing Foggy to stifle a smirk. Matt wasn’t so fearless after all.

“Matt!” She yelled. “What happened to your _face?_ ” Then her eyes landed on Foggy and she redirected her trajectory at the last second. “Foggy! I missed you!”

He dropped down to hug her from a better angle. “I’ve missed you too, pumpkin.”

“Where’ve you _been?_ ”

Keeping Spiderman out of jail, getting shot, making sure his two best friends stayed alive. The usual. “Hard at work keeping people out of trouble.”

“People like Matt?” she asked knowingly.

“You can’t just assume that,” Matt grumbled.

“What’s assume?” she asked innocently.

Maeva rolled her eyes. “You know what assume means, Ella. Matt, Franklin, c’mon inside.”

“Foggy,” Foggy corrected.

She gave him a weird look. “Foggy. Right. C’mon in.”

They shuffled obediently into the home, detouring in the kitchen. Ella was chattering nonstop about an elaborate game her classmates had set up at recess. Foggy listened carefully, but he heard no facts to indicate that she’d participated in any fights. Maeva fetched an ice pack from the freezer and handed it to Matt, which he wordlessly accepted and held to his face. Which was…huh. Just how experienced were the Valliers with Matt’s…Mattness?

“You good?” Ella asked him eagerly.

His voice was light, playful. “Yeah, lead the way.”

So Ella dragged Matt and Foggy into the dining room. There were cookies waiting at the table along with plenty of napkins and a large box of putty—Matt’s Christmas gift to her.

“Are we not painting today?” Matt asked.

“Nope! We’re using _this_.” She brandished the box.

“This,” Matt repeated, tilting his head.

“Can you tell what it is if it’s all in the box?” she asked curiously, prompting to Foggy to wonder what exactly she understood of Matt’s senses.

He grinned under the ice pack he was still holding. “One sec.” He breathed in deeply. “It smells like clay?”

“Putty!” she corrected gleefully. “You gave it to me! Remember?” Not waiting for an answer, she cleared away a space and started unpacking the box, revealing lots of tubs of brightly-colored putty. Once Matt and Foggy were seated, she aligned the colors like a rainbow and started dutifully informing him of which color was where.

She was an actual angel and he was still so, so good with her.

“Ella?” Micah popped into the room. “I need to grab Matt for a second.”

“Okay,” she said cheerily, and while Matt slipped out of his chair she turned all her attention on Foggy, which was unfortunate because he wanted to pay attention to whatever Micah wanted.

Micah pulled Matt into the family room, but the door was still open. Micah started talking, low and fast. Foggy couldn’t make out what he was saying, but he looked concerned. Matt, meanwhile, looked…weirdly not defensive. Defensiveness or sarcasm were Matt’s go-to responses to someone else’s concern, but it didn’t look like either of those were happening right now.

Huh.

Matt gave a hesitant nod and Micah squeezed his shoulder. Micah whispered something else, and a small smile appeared on Matt’s face. The smile was still there when Matt made his way back to the dining room, not even bothering to feel along the walls. He dropped unerringly back into his seat.

“What did Dad want?” Ella demanded.

“To tell me he thinks you’re ready to learn flips.”

Her eyes grew round. “ _Really?_ ”

Foggy was ninety-seven percent positive that Micah hadn’t said anything about flips, but it worked to distract Ella. “I know I’m not the resident expert, but I’d like to point out that self-defense doesn’t necessarily _have_ to involve flips.”

Ella looked at him like he was the biggest idiot on the planet. “Yes, it does.”

Matt wasn’t gonna teach her in the ring at his gym, wasn’t he? “Don’t you need, like, a trampoline to learn flips? You know, for safety?”

“I was thinking we’d just try it off a roof somewhere, actually,” Matt said, straight-faced.

Ella tensed. “Um. Which roof, Matt?”

She said it like _some_ roofs might be acceptable. Foggy stared at her, horrified.

“I don’t know, which one’s the tallest?”

Foggy kicked him under the table.

“Ow.” He glared towards Foggy. “Sorry, Ella. I’m kidding about the roofs.”

She melted a little in relief. “I’m not scared of roofs,” she insisted.

This seemed like a good Teaching Moment. “You should be,” Foggy told her firmly.

She focused on her putty creation, a little blue lion with a bright green mane. “I go on my roof all the time.”

What. “What,” Foggy said.

“Maybe not _all_ the time,” she amended. “But sometimes. To talk to that guy.”

That sounded really, really creepy and Foggy was about to camp out on her rooftop with a baseball bat when Matt clarified. “Stone. He was keeping an eye on things here before…everything happened.”

“I left him cookies,” Ella said, then prodded gloomily at her lion. “He didn’t eat them.”

“He probably wanted to,” Matt encouraged her. “But he didn’t think he was allowed to.”

Forehead creasing, she set her lion down. “Why not?”

Foggy put aside his own art—a tiny dinosaur—and raised his eyebrows at Matt, extra curious to hear how Matt would explain it.

“Well.” Matt seemingly kept his attention on the purple dog he was shaping. “Cookies are nice, but they’re not necessary. Nice but unnecessary things can be a distraction, and distractions are dangerous.”

She looked understandably confused. “Cookies are a distraction?”

“No, but…it’s the principle of it.”

She folded her arms on the table, and dropped her chin onto her arms. “That seems sad.”

Matt’s face did something weird and he didn’t answer.

“Hey,” Foggy said nudged Ella’s elbow. “Your lion’s really nice. He’s missing a tail, though.”

Her tiny shoulders shrugged. “I’m thinking about giving him a shark’s tail.”

Matt frowned. “Uh…why?”

“Because it’ll be awesome,” Foggy said loftily.

Matt opened his mouth, but Ella spoke first. “Matt, can I see what you’re making?”

His lips twitched. “Uh, pretty sure you just can.”

“I mean…” She looked suddenly shy. “Can I _look_ at it? Like Miss Esther does?”

Foggy recognized that name. Ella’s therapist.

Matt blinked like he understood, then dropped his gaze towards his statue. “It’s not that big of a deal, Ella. This is just a dog.”

“Please?”

She wasn’t even _trying_ to sound persuasive. Foggy knew, because she’d used her begging-for-things voice on more than one occasion against him, each time to great effect. But her I-sincerely-want-this-but-will-not-use-tricks-to-get-it voice was, ironically, even more irresistible.

Sure enough, Matt sighed and, with the face of a man surrendering the key to a safe, passed her his artwork.

She held it up to her face with the intensity of an old Western assayer inspecting gold. Then she raised her unfairly large brown eyes to him. “Matt, are you upset?”

“No.” He sounded startled. “Why would you think that?”

“Your dog is upset. It’s on guard.”

“My dog is not—” He took the sculpture back. “My dog is not on guard. It’s just a dog.”

Shaking her head fiercely, she stole it back from him. “No, see? Its ears are all forward.”

Matt looked disgruntled. “Because it’s…paying attention to whatever’s happening in front of it, that’s all.”

“Its whole body is leaning forward,” she insisted. Foggy squinted and realized that, yeah, she was kind of right. The dog’s body strained forward like it was about to leap into battle or something. Noticing him staring, she jerked her chin up. “Foggy, do _you_ think his dog looks happy?”

“Maybe happy isn’t quite the right word,” Foggy hedged. “But just because the dog is anxious doesn’t mean Matt—”

“Are you _anxious_ , Matt?” she demanded, wielding the new word like a weapon. “Did you make an anxious dog because you’re anxious?”

“Why do I do this to myself,” Matt muttered under his breath.

Great question, buddy.

Foggy intervened. “Ella, sometimes people don’t want to talk about what they’re feeling. And even if you think you can figure it out, that doesn’t mean you need to force them to admit it. Feelings are private.” Unless you were in a room with someone who could recognize different types of sweat by scent. Or with a seven-year-old who picked up way too much at her therapy sessions.

She was staring worriedly at Matt. “But Micah says you have to talk about things if you want help. You can’t just keep it all bottled up inside.”

Foggy was trying to figure out how to explain that people should also be smart about choosing a person to talk to without offending her when Matt spoke. “Yeah, Ella,” he said calmly. “Things are a bit stressful right now.”

Putting her elbows on the table, she dropped her chin into her hands. “Are you getting help?”

Matt’s eyes flicked quickly towards Foggy. “Foggy helps.”

Foggy didn’t feel like Foggy helped. Foggy just sat there while Claire and Maggie fixed his broken bones and Foggy definitely wasn’t volunteering to babysit Dex and all his pointy things. But he could accept a compliment.

But whatever Ella was reading on Matt’s face clearly convinced her he was being honest. She flashed Foggy a blinding smile and handed the dog back. “Okay,” she said simply.

“Ella.” Maeva appeared silently in the doorway to the kitchen, startling everyone except Matt. “Time to clean up for dinner.”

“But—”

“What did I say?”

Ella ducked her head. “Yes, Mom.”

Mom? When did _that_ happen?

Ella hopped to it, with Foggy and Matt helping because they weren’t heathens. Maeva and Micah worked together to set the table and the food smelled like it deserved its own TV show. The whole thing was unbearably domestic.

Then Matt’s head twitched to the side like he was picking up on something; the tension was clear in his neck and shoulders. He relaxed a second later—whatever caught his attention must not have been actually concerning. A quick look around suggested that no one else even noticed. A longer look around made Foggy realized that if there was a threat, no one at the table except Matt had any special training to deal with it, unless Micah or Maeva had some history of martial arts training or service in the armed forces or something. If there was a threat, Matt alone would be able to keep everyone else safe.

Was that how he felt all the time?

 

Matt

He could’ve headed back to his apartment after he left the Valliers’ place. Probably should’ve. He and Foggy still had cases to work on. Or he could meditate, try to get his injuries to heal faster. Or he could even, maybe, sleep. But as long as Stone insisted on keeping Dex out of prison, someone had to stay with him. Meaning Matt couldn’t be sure when he’d have privacy like this again. So his feet found their way to the church.

Micah was worried about the broken bones. Genuinely worried. (Matt should really stop being surprised.) He’d also been close to panicking until Matt promised to explain later. Matt wasn’t looking forward to it. Hadn’t anticipated he’d need to. Foggy was different. Foggy was used to Matt getting injured by now. But even though Micah obviously knew, logically, that Matt didn’t exactly live a safe life, coming face-to-face with so much evidence apparently threw him off.

And Matt hadn’t even thought about it. was Midland Circle all over again, where he’d cared more about getting through to Elektra than anything else. When he went to find Fisk, he hadn’t thought at all about how anyone in his life would deal with his injuries. He definitely hadn’t thought about how any of the people he cared about would deal with his death.

Catching the distant hint of scented smoke, he took a deep breath. Not like Matt needed more evidence of his own selfishness, but still.

Well, he’d learned from the best, hadn’t he? _Dad, why didn’t you just go down in the fifth?_

Weird that approaching the church made him think of Jack. He was never very religious and Matt still suspected that the few religious conversation between them had been because Dad thought he _should_ talk to his son about God, not because he particularly wanted to. Maybe he felt like he had to do it for Matt’s grandmother’s sake. Or…or maybe for Maggie’s.

Did it ever bother him, knowing Maggie basically chose the Catholic church over him? Over their family? Did him ever blame God for Maggie’s decision?

Well, even if Dad could answer, those particular concerns were pretty secondary at the moment. If Matt had the chance to talk to him again, be much more interested in other questions.

_How did you react, when you found out you were having me?_

_Did you ever feel ready?_

He caught Maggie’s voice the second he stepped inside the church. He wasn’t trying to eavesdrop and she was barely mouthing the words, but he it was hard to resist how he was drawn to her voice. And once he heard her say Dex’s name, it was even harder not to listen in. She was praying for him. No, not just praying for him. She was asking forgiveness for how she’d failed him.

Matt wrapped his fingers tighter around his cane. It wasn’t her fault that Vanessa got to Dex. All the wisdom in the world wouldn’t matter to Dex if someone else was offering literal freedom. But if she was asking for forgiveness _now_ , he could only assume that she’d been asking for a while and hadn’t felt that she’d received it.

“Matthew?”

He turned around as Father Driscoll drew near. “Good evening, Father.”

“I’d ask if you’re all right, but you’re clearly not.”

Matt quirked his lips. “Is my sinfulness that obvious?”

“I was referring to your many bodily injuries.”

“Oh.”

“Is that what you’ve come to talk about?”

Not specifically. Matt shook his head.

“Perhaps you _should_ talk about it.” Driscoll’s heart started beating faster, though his voice maintained the careful calm of someone used to coaching others through trauma. “Was this done by someone close to you?”

There was nothing Matt could say that wouldn’t reveal too much or cause Driscoll to call the police. “I just came to see my—Sister Maggie. But she seems busy, so…” But Matt didn’t make any move to leave.

Driscoll sank back onto his heels, his body language casual even though it wasn’t like Matt could see it. “Father Lantom said you were partial to lattes.”

“Father Lantom spoke about me?”

“He spoke to me about all of the most faithful of his flock, as well as about those he was the most worried about.”

Matt scoffed under his breath. “And which category did I fall into?”

“Both,” Driscoll said.

“Father Lantom thought I was _faithful?_ ”

“If by faithful you mean that you came to mass every week, no,” Driscoll admitted. “But he told me about the questions you would ask. It takes a lot of faith to ask those kinds of questions—if you actually care about the answer, at least. Father Lantom never got the impression that you were challenging things just for the sake of being argumentative.”

Matt felt himself smile. “Father Lantom _definitely_ thought I was argumentative.”

“Because you care,” Driscoll reiterated. “You’re honest in your questions and you refuse to settle for spiritual platitudes precisely because your view of God—and the way you think God views you—matters.”

“Father Lantom told you all that, did he?” Matt asked dryly.

“I inferred some things,” Driscoll admitted. “Am I wrong?”

“You might be exaggerating a bit.”

“Ah, well.” Driscoll shrugged. “I take it you didn’t come so I could analyze your faith. You can wait here for Maggie, or…?”

Matt wet his lips. “You busy now, Father?”

He stood poised. “Not particularly.”

“Well, it, uh…it really has been too long since my last confession.”

“Since Father Lantom passed,” Driscoll agreed carefully. “Is that something you’re interested in?”

“Only if you have time.”

Driscoll didn’t hesitate. “I do. Latte?”

No, Matt didn’t really want to have this conversation in the kitchen where he found such guidance from Father Lantom. But he nodded and followed Driscoll into the other room, the one that smelled of burnt casseroles and store-bought desserts. He wrapped his right hand around the cup Driscoll poured him. “It’s been longer, actually.”

Driscoll sat just across the table. “What has?”

“My last confession was before, uh…before we lost Father Lantom.” Before Midland Circle, even. He’d talked with Father Lantom about Elektra. “I was, uh…in a pretty bad accident. Maybe you know about it?”

Driscoll shook his head. “Father Lantom talked with me about spiritual needs and gave no more context than necessary. Whatever you choose to tell me will probably be the first I’ve heard of it.”

In a way, that was reassuring. Then again…. “It took a while for me to recover,” he explained. “Physically.”

“And spiritually?”

“Even longer,” Matt said quietly. “That’s, um…that’s the thing.” Then he stopped.

Driscoll waited.

And waited.

Matt opened his mouth. Closed it. Wet his lips. But Driscoll wasn’t Father Lantom. Wasn’t even close. And as much as Father Lantom’s lies and secrets had hurt, at least Matt had _known_ Father Lantom.

More importantly, Father Lantom had known him.

Matt never asked how he’d figured it out. Hadn’t wanted to. Would’ve been smart to; Matt should’ve at least made sure that whatever clues Father Lantom had picked up on to tell him who Matt was and what he could do weren’t so obvious to anyone else. But Matt had this private idea that Father Lantom’s insight was somehow a gift from God, a bit of extra wisdom. It wasn’t like Father Lantom hadn’t needed all the wisdom he could get for dealing with Matt.

But Driscoll had no idea. And the thought of starting from scratch? Figuring out if Matt could trust Driscoll, figuring out how to tell Driscoll…or getting close enough for Driscoll to be able to realize the truth for himself?

Matt kind of wished he could skip the priest part of confession and just talk straight to God.

“Perhaps you should tell me what it is you want to confess,” Driscoll suggested, “and we can work backwards from there.”

He made it sound so simple. “Why not?” Matt muttered under his breath. He cleared his throat. “Suicidality. Father. Uh. Twice.”

Driscoll’s heartrate increased slightly, to Matt’s discomfort. “What drove you to consider suicide, Matthew?”

Ha. Matt grimaced. “The first time…after the accident…I thought I’d lost everything. The people that I loved. My calling. Everything. The second time…it was because I did something I—I told myself I’d never do.”

And sh—shoot. He needed to confess that, too.

“Do you regret trying to take your own life?”

“Yes,” Matt said immediately, relieved when his own heartbeat remained steady. “I’m thankful for what I’ve been able to experience since.” He thought of all the things he never would have known if his life had ended there. Ella. Micah. Marriage to Karen. The tiny new heartbeat. “So, yes. I repent.”

“May God bless you for it,” Driscoll said, and he sounded sincere enough. “Now, for your penance, I want you to—”

“Uh, Father?” Matt interrupted, feeling his face warm slightly. “There’s more.”

At least he couldn’t hear anyone waiting to talk to Driscoll.

“Of course,” Driscoll said quickly. “I’m listening.”

Matt swallowed. “You might know about this, since it’s public record, but…there was a man, the father of a little girl I was trying to help. And I…”

_I killed him._

Why were the words still so hard to say?

He was out of practice

Driscoll’s voice softened. “If it helps, I do know about that.”

It didn’t really. God knew every sin, yet sinners were still called to confess. Whether God or Driscoll knew was irrelevant for the act of contrition. “I killed him. And then…I said it was in self-defense. But…but it wasn’t, not really. I wasn’t afraid of him.”

“Wasn’t there a third person there? Someone vulnerable?” Driscoll asked gently. Giving him an out.

Matt’s glasses felt heavy, pressing on his ears and the bridge of his nose. “I was angry.”

“But you didn’t intend to take his life.”

Did that matter? Didn’t Jesus teach that hating a man was the same thing as killing him in God’s sight? “I just…needed to confess.”

“All right.” Driscoll’s hand moved slightly, like he wanted to touch Matt, but he seemed to realize that Matt didn’t quite trust him enough for that. “Well—”

“One more thing,” Matt said softly. “Please.”

“I’m listening.”

Matt took a deep breath. “I went to see someone recently. Someone dangerous. Someone that I hate. Someone who’s threatening the people I—the people I love.”

Driscoll’s heartbeat quickened at the hint of the devil in Matt’s voice, but his voice remained calm. “How did that conversation go?”

“It wasn’t exactly…a conversation.”

“What happened, then?”

Clenching his jaw, Matt shoved away the frustration that this man wasn’t Father Lantom. “Let’s just say I know how to fight. My dad, he was a boxer. He taught me. So when I went to see this person, we fought.”

If Driscoll was surprised, he didn’t show it. “Are you confessing to violence, then? Anger?”

Worse. Matt tightened his grip on his cane. “The thing is, Father, I think I went there hoping that…that only one of us would walk away. I don’t think I really cared…which of us was, uh, left.”

Two mortal sins—murder or suicide.

“And these, do you repent of these as well?”

“I’m…trying.”

“If we confess our sins,” Driscoll murmured, “God is faithful and just to not only forgive us but cleanse us from all unrighteousness. You’ve confessed. For your penance, I want you to practice trusting that promise.”

“What?”

“Practice trusting the promise,” Driscoll repeated calmly.

Matt rubbed his jaw. “No offense, Father, but that seems a bit too easy.”

To his surprise, Driscoll laughed. “Only someone who’s never tried to believe it could say that.”

He took a sip of his latte, but his stomach still felt twisted with guilt. “Of course, Father. I’ll try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ella, Matt, and Foggy are so fun together!


	8. Courtesy Call

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, this chapter was almost the death of me. But I'm really excited to get to what comes next, so I'm just gonna post it.
> 
> Title from "Courtesy Call" by Thousand Foot Krutch (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocpDEOXABWg).

Matt

Driscoll sat quietly with them while they finished their lattes. Well, it wasn’t quiet for Matt. He could hear the laundry machine in the basement, and all the kids playing and arguing in the orphanage.  He could also hear Maggie ending her prayer, her footsteps bringing her to the kitchen to join them. Aiming a smile her direction, Matt wondered if Father Driscoll knew the truth about their relationship.

Once she was close enough, Maggie ruffled his hair and, before he could wriggle away, dropped a kiss on his forehead.

That probably answered that.

“Good lattes?” she asked.

“I’d say so,” Driscoll answered in a voice that suggested that _latte_ was some kind of code word. He stood up. “Well, I should probably work a bit more on Sunday’s sermon. It was good to see you, Matthew.”

“Can’t say the same, Father.”

Driscoll’s steps faltered and his temperature rose slightly. “I mean…”

Whoops.

Before Matt could apologize, Maggie was waiving the priest off. “You get used to it, Timothy.” She stole the chair besides Matt. “Be nice next time.”

“I was trying to be honest,” he protested.

“Does that mean you told him everything?”

“Uh…no.”

“Not so honest, then.”

“I told him what I could.”

She folded her hands in her lap, the picture of patience. God knew she needed it with him. “How did Father Lantom find out in the first place?”

Matt ran his finger around the edge of his cup. “I never asked and he never said. Hey.” He tilted his head at her. “How are you doing with…with not having him?”

Propping her elbow on the table, Maggie rested her chin on her hand. “I know I’ll see him again.”

“Yeah, but…?”

“It’s hard,” she admitted. “A church is about the people, not just the place. And Father Lantom made this place more of a home than my actual home.” She paused. “Which isn’t saying much.”

He didn’t know anything about her actual home. He had enough to learn about her life since he’d been born that he hadn’t gotten around to asking about her childhood. “What—”

“Are you going to tell Father Driscoll?” she interrupted firmly.

He got the hint. “Haven’t decided.”

“He might make a good sounding board. For instance.” He could practically hear her eyebrows rise. “He probably would’ve told you not to break into Fisk’s prison cell.”

“Foggy and Karen already yelled at me for that.”

“That’s what friends are for.” Her tone softened. “And what about Stone?”

What about him? Matt shot her a questioning look.

“Isn’t he your friend too?”

He coughed in surprise. “I don’t really think of him that way.”

“Why not?”

Why _not?_ “Mom, he’s…he’s killed people. Intentionally.” Repeatedly and carelessly.

“He left Dex alive,” Maggie reminded him.

“As a tactical decision, not because—”

“Not because he wants to be more like you instead of like Stick?” Maggie cut in. “Not because he knows you’ll have nothing to do with him unless he comes around to your way of thinking?”

Matt hoped she could hear the incredulity in his voice. “It’s not a _way of thinking_. It’s what’s moral, it’s what God wants.”

“And do you think anyone has bothered to explain that to Stone? Or does Stone think you have this arbitrary rule that he’d better follow if he wants to share in your life at all?”

“What makes you think I want him sharing in my life?” Not that Matt was convinced that he didn’t want that. But he definitely wasn’t sure if he should.

Maggie snorted. “If I recall, you _both_ ran around on rooftops training together.”

“Yeah,” Matt agreed pointedly. “Training.”

Maggie sighed. “Matthew, you’re not a child anymore. Far be it from me to tell you who you should and shouldn’t have as a friend. But I think Stone is someone who needs help, and just doesn’t quite know how to ask for it, and I think you know better than anyone how to give him that help.”

Oh, she was _disappointed_ in him. He hated it. “Mom, do you…do you think Stone’s a good person?”

“That’s not for me to say.”

“I’m not asking you to give a final judgment. Just…in general.”

She took a moment to think. “Well, I remember what you said when you first started training together. You told me he thought he needed to fix you.”

To finish what Stick started. To shape Matt into a warrior.

“His methods were warped, but his instinct was to help you.” She squeezed his arm. “You’re my son. I can find some appreciation for anyone who makes it their goal to help you. And Stone sacrificed a lot, didn’t he?”

Matt wasn’t entirely sure what Stone possessed in the first place to give up. Still, he nodded.

Standing, Maggie slipped her hand under his chin and tilted his head up like she could make him meet her eyes. “And if that was his first instinct, I’d say he at least has a lot more in common with you than with Stick.”

 

Stone

He woke before dawn to the sound of Karen surrendering her last meal into the toilet. Quickly drawing his senses in towards himself, Stone got up off the floor and opened the nearest window. By the time Karen padded miserably out of the bathroom, Stone was awake enough to be annoyed.

One look at her face, however, was more than enough incentive to keep his mouth shut. She was simultaneously flushed and pale, and shivering, and she curled into a tight ball as soon as she was under the covers on the bed.

Stone cleared his throat. “Do you need water?”

No answer.

He studied her until he decided that she wasn’t suffering from mere physical discomfort. She was embarrassed. Half of Stone wanted to roll his eyes—it wasn’t like he was thrilled at the situation either, yet sometimes war demanded awkward circumstances. But the half of him that used to be a brother felt a stab of sympathy. Of course she would rather be anywhere but with him.

Still, perhaps he could alleviate some of her discomfort. He cleared his throat. “Did Matty ever teach you to mediate?”

“Don’t call him that,” she said from under the covers.

Frowning, Stone cocked his head. “Why not? It’s his name.”

Two sad blue eyes appeared over the blankets. “His dad called him that.”

What, did Matty complain to her about it? Stone leaned against the windowsill. “So did Stick.”

With a huff, she just curled up even more. “You never asked if he was okay with it.”

“I never asked if he was okay with most things. But we’ve strayed from my earlier question. Did Matthew ever teach you to meditate?”

“A little.” Her voice floated up from the blankets. “When we had time.”

“It should help with the nausea. I can teach you,” Stone added, already preparing himself for her rejection.

But she slowly sat up. A few tendrils of blonde hair were stuck to her sweaty face. “If this doesn’t work, I’ll stab you for getting my hopes up.”

“I expect nothing less.” Stone hesitated just to verify that she did not in fact have anything she could easily use to stab him before sitting on the bed beside her. “Close your eyes,” he began, and once she did, he smoothly sent Matty a text.

 

Karen

About half an hour later, she wasn’t sure if she was _mediating_ , exactly, but she was definitely…relaxed. At least, she was relaxed until Stone suddenly leapt off the bed. She opened her eyes. “What’s wrong?” She figured it out for herself a second later at the sound of Matt’s footsteps on the stairs outside. “You called him here? What about Dex?”

Stone retreated to the corner of the room, arms folded, eyes closed like he didn’t care to observe the world around him. “He’ll be fine on his own for half an hour.”

“That’s what you think or that’s what Matt thinks?”

Stone’s lips twitched. “That’s what I think. _He_ thinks you’re more important than whatever damage Dex might cause. Hence…” He swept his arm towards the door as it opened.

“I tied Dex up,” Matt said, shooting Stone a look that Karen couldn’t interpret even though he’d tucked his sunglasses into the breast pocket of his dress shirt. Crossing the room to the bed, he rested a feather-light hand against her forehead. “What’s wrong?”

She stuck to the simplest answer. “Morning sickness. Fun fact: morning sickness is _not_ limited to the morning.”

Kneeling beside the bed, he held one of her hands in both of his. “Sorry about that. Can I get you anything? Water?”

She shook her head. “I’m just really glad you’re here.”

“Can’t I do anything to help?” He sounded determined enough that he’d try to do whatever she asked, be it buying her ginger ale or taking her to start a new life in Spain.

And he was staring at her so earnestly that she felt tears stinging her eyes.

“Karen?” he asked more urgently.

“Nothing. Stupid pregnancy hormones.”

His head tilted at the lie.

“You can’t,” she admitted at last, knowing that this time he’d hear the truth in her heartbeat. “You can’t help.”

He shifted one of his hands to rub soothingly at her arm. “Think I’d still like to try.”

It just felt so pointless. Actually, it almost felt selfish to wrestle with feeling guilty in the midst of all their problems. Yet to _not_ feel guilty would be even worse, wouldn’t it? Because this was her fault. The reason she was in danger, the reason Foggy was in danger, the reason Ella was in danger, the reason her _baby_ was in danger…it was all her fault.

She’d taken her gun on purpose when she’d gone to Vanessa’s gallery.

 _It gets easier,_ Fisk said in her nightmares. _The more you kill._

He was right.

But Karen couldn’t say any of that. It wasn’t even because Stone was in the room. In fact, Stone…Stone might understand better. The real problem was that Karen couldn’t throw all that weight onto Matt. It wasn’t his burden to bear.

If he really wanted to help, though, she could give him something else. A lesser burden. “I just keep, um…I keep doing the math.”

He cocked his head.

“Matt, I was already pregnant when I went to see Vanessa.”

His eyes widened.

“And I keep thinking how close it was to…to coming out a different way.” She spoke faster. “I could’ve _died_ , and the baby wouldn’t have even had a _chance_ , and you wouldn’t have even known unless you found out in the—in the _medical report_ or—”

“You didn’t know,” he said immediately, rubbing more urgently at her arm. “It’s okay. You’re here, you’re _both_ okay.”

She sat up. “None of that changes the fact that it would’ve been my fault.”

His hands stilled and his eyes narrowed, giving her that peculiar sense of being undressed and examined. “Do you think the rest of this is your fault?”

She’d said too much, and he’d understood too much, and there was no denying it now. “I told you, you can’t fix this.”

For a moment, he didn’t answer. “Maybe not,” he admitted at last, like the words pained him, “but it might help if you talk to me anyway.”

“Not if whatever I say makes you go throw yourself at Fisk,” she snapped.

He blinked. “Is there any reason why it would?”

“I don’t know, Matt, was there any reason why realizing I’m pregnant would send you on a suicide mission to Fisk’s prison cell?” As soon as the words were out she wished she could take them back. “Sorry.”

“No, you’re right.” He wound his fingers together with hers. “I was just…I was scared. But I won’t do that again, I promise.”

She wanted to believe him, but he was asking for more faith than she had. Because if it came down to a choice between either his life and or hers, or _theirs_ , he would absolutely give up his own. And maybe she could understand that in a situation where those really were the only two options, but he was too quick to make that choice when he didn’t even have to.

She glanced up at Stone in the corner, still standing there. He’d pulled out a knife to fiddle with, chipping away at a scratch in the wall, which she took to mean that he was listening intently. He didn’t offer to leave and Matt wasn’t mentioning him at all. Following her lead, probably. It was startling to realize that she didn’t particularly care whether Stone stayed or left.

Drawing her gaze back to Matt, she bit her lip. “I don’t think you get it.”

A small smile touched his mouth. “I probably don’t.”

“When you went to see Fisk, if he’d…if he’d killed you—”

“He didn’t. I wasn’t—”

“If he _had_ , it would’ve been on _me_.”

That shut him up.

She took a deep breath. “Because I’m the one who shot Vanessa and I’m the reason Fisk wants to kill us, and that’s the only reason you went to fight him. So if Fisk gets to Foggy, or Ella, or you, or _our child_ …it’s my fault.”

“Karen,” he said softly. “Fisk hated me before he ever—”

“I killed Wesley,” she hissed, and Stone lowered his knife. “I killed Wesley and I killed Vanessa and you’ve never killed anyone in cold blood like that, and I just…” She gulped for breath. “I deserve this, not you, it’s not _fair_.” The tears escaped as she pulled her knees to her chest. He tried so hard to protect life no matter what, and she made two mistakes and now he was paying for it? “Matt,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

His searched her face unseeingly. “How long have you been thinking this?”

Did that matter?

“Sweetheart, I don’t feel that way at all. We put Fisk away _together_. And we’re fighting him _together_.”

“But when you fight, it’s to help people, and it’s noble, and—”

He looked startled. “Noble?”

False humility at its best. She wiped at her face. “Yeah, Matt,” she said tiredly.

“I…I’ve literally tortured people.” His eyes darkened. “And…and I _enjoy_ it.”

Enjoy? She sniffled. “Really?”

His eyes flicked towards Stone in the corner before settling on her again. “It’s not only about helping people. For me. Never has been.”

“I didn’t know.”

He pressed his mouth into a grim line. “Yeah, well, it’s not exactly something I go around talking about. And…and I’d really rather you not tell Foggy, since I think he just assumes I feel guilty over hitting people, not that I…not that I feel guilty over not feeling guilty for hitting people.”

A small laugh slipped past her lips before she could help it. “Guilt is weird.”

 

Claire

It was nice to be going somewhere because she’d decided she wanted to help, not because someone had woken her up in the middle of the night with an emergency. This wasn’t even the middle of the night—it was just after her evening shift and no one urgently needed her. No, she was going to Stone’s apartment just because she wanted to. Matt had mentioned that was where Karen was staying, and Claire wanted to see the miracle for herself.

The door opened before she could knock, and there was Stone. Or, apparently, Emiliano. The name was humanizing. Maybe that was why he didn’t tend to use it. Tough luck; Claire was calling him that indefinitely.

“Claire,” he greeted her formally. “Karen said you were coming.”

“Well, _someone_ has to check on her, and neither you nor Matt qualify. Can I come in?” She was prepared to shoulder past him, but it _was_ his apartment, so she made a show of politeness.

“Please.” He held the door open for her.

Karen was working on her computer, sitting cross-legged on surprisingly fluffy bedding. “Hi, Claire.”

She looked good. Healthy. “Matt told me about your good news.”

Karen rolled her eyes. “I know. I’m surprised he didn’t send the Avengers an email.”

“Isn’t the kid a bit young to be hunted by recruiters?” Claire sat on the bed beside her. “So who’s your OBGYN?” Then it was Claire’s turn to roll her eyes. “You don’t have one yet. Why am I not surprised.”

Karen blushed. “Yeah, we’ll get on that. I guess I just haven’t really had the chance to start daydreaming yet, you know?”

“You daydream about OBGYNs?” Claire asked dryly.

Shaking her head, Karen smiled. “All of it. Choosing a name, decorating the nursery. Buying baby socks. And I think doctor’s appointments will make it all seem more real.”

“Have you taken an actual pregnancy test yet, or are you just going off Matt’s ears?”

“You doubt Matt’s ears?”

“No, but…” Claire pulled a box of pregnancy tests out of her bag and tossed it at Karen. “I think this might make it seem real.”

Karen caught it, eyes wide as she stared down at the pink package. “Um, yeah. Okay.” Withdrawing one of the tests from the box, she glanced back up at Claire and swallowed nervously.

Claire took pity on her. “I’ll come with you. You’ll need to bring a lot of information to your first appointment and I can start writing down the list.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Stone, you don’t mind if we commandeer your bathroom for a bit?”

He was still leaning against the wall, wearing an expression she couldn’t interpret. “Not at all.”

Claire grabbed a glass of water on her way, but when they were both closeted in the bathroom, Karen put a hand on Claire’s arm. “Have I ever thanked you?” she asked.

Claire set the glass on the counter. “For?”

“Keeping him alive.”

“I don’t do it for the thanks.”

“Still.” Karen’s blue eyes searched Claire’s face. “Thank you.”

“I really should be thanking you. I mean, it’s one thing to beat up bad guys and rescue people like Matt does, but you attack it at a higher level. Exposing Union Allied? And Matt told me about all the research you did when Fisk got out the second time. You figured out how he was financing his whole operation. _And_ you did it _without_ getting ripped to pieces.”

From Karen’s expression, that was probably the wrong thing to say. Why, because other people had gotten ripped to pieces?

“Anyway,” Claire hurried on. “Not all heroes wear devil masks. Drink your water.”

While Karen drained the class, Claire started asking questions, taking note of Karen’s answers on her phone. Major illnesses and surgeries, gynecological history, current medications, and more. Karen answered dutifully and Claire included an asterisk for any answers that were incomplete. Once Claire was satisfied, she texted Karen the list and ducked out to let her take the test in peace.

Stone was by the bed, inspecting the box of pregnancy tests. He dropped it immediately.

“Miracles of science, those things,” Claire said casually.

He drew a knife from his belt and started spinning it. “How was work?”

Small talk with a knife. By this point, she expected nothing less. “Long, but we released twins from the ICU today. You should’ve seen their parents’ smiles.”

“How long is long?”

Extended small talk. Okay. “Today, about ten hours. When was the last time you had a regular job?”

“Upper secondary school,” he answered absently. “At a bookstore.”

“Upper…?”

“High school,” he said quickly, almost irately, like he’d gotten the answer wrong on a test.

“A bookstore,” Claire mused.

Karen’s voice piped up from behind. “He keeps trying to get me to go to a library.” Claire turned, and one look at her face confirmed that the test agreed with Matt.

Claire grinned. “Congratulations.”

“The test was redundant,” Emiliano reminded them all.

One of Karen’s hands settled across her stomach. “Can _you_ hear the heartbeat?”

Emiliano shot a glance at Claire. “…No.”

“He’s good,” Karen informed Claire, “but his senses aren’t as good as Matt’s.”

She sounded smug. Emiliano looked displeased. Claire smirked. “So…library?”

Emiliano gave an annoyed twitch of his head. “This place is boring and Karen will do better research with better internet access.”

“It’s a _public_ library,” Karen groaned. “I just know I’ll set foot in there and puke from someone’s perfume.”

Claire studied Emiliano. “Why not just go on your own?”

She knew why. He and Matt worked out some kind of deal that involved Emiliano keeping an eye on Karen (which Matt wanted for obvious reasons) and Matt not throwing Dex back in prison (which Emiliano wanted for unknown reasons).

The ninja didn’t respond.

Karen, however, did. “If you leave me alone to go read, I promise I won’t tattle.”

If Emiliano was trained by the person who trained Matt, she couldn’t imagine that he’d been encouraged to spend much time reading. “Might be nice,” Claire suggested mildly.

Emiliano huffed. “If he asks, tell Matthew I’m checking on the girl.”

He meant Ella, Claire assumed. “Are you _actually_ checking on her?”

“Someone has to,” he said darkly, sheathing his knife and heading for the door.

 

Matt

He couldn’t justify bringing a kid into this. But Peter wasn’t just a teenager who happened to have special powers. Matt still— _still_ —didn’t know the full story of how Peter became Spiderman, but he knew it had something to do with Peter’s uncle. He recognized the way Peter’s shoulders still curled inward at any mention of him too well. Peter felt guilty, and the guilt had driven him to heroism.

Matt knew as well as anyone how hard that was to resist.

So the best strategy seemed to be to get in front of this.

“Spiderman,” Matt began, hoping fervently that this wasn’t a mistake. “This is Dex.”

Night had fallen and Dex stood just behind Matt on Matt’s roof. Peter’s mask made a _whirring_ sound as his eyes widened. “You’re Agent Poindexter! I read about—” He broke off. “You,” he finished awkwardly.

“Let’s be clear,” Matt said. “Dex is currently a fugitive, but it’s better for everyone’s sake to have him here with us than to unleash him somewhere Fisk can get to him. So he’ll be tagging along for a while.”

“Sure,” Peter said quickly. “No problem. Great to meet you, Mr.—Agent—Poindexter. Um.” He hesitated, then the words tumbled out: “I read about the motorcade attack and the forensics said you actually ricocheted bullets and that’s literally insane. D’you have to think about the angles in your head or do you just know where to shoot?”

Dex took a second to respond, probably adjusting to Peter’s…personality. “I just know.”

“So cool,” Peter breathed.

Aside from the murder part, yeah.

“Where’s that other guy?” Peter glanced around. “Uh, Stone?”

“He’s working on something,” Matt answered, realizing he was looking forward to telling Peter the truth about who Stone was guarding. Once Dex wasn’t there to overhear.

“Right. I was just wondering because maybe we should hold off on sparring practice because of your—” Peter gestured. “Arm.”

“My arm’s fine.”

Peter gave a nervous laugh. “Actually, uh, I was informed by a very reliable source that you’re not supposed to use that arm for another four weeks.”

Foggy. “I don’t need both arms to spar with you.”

“What if I hit you, though?”

Matt smiled, showing his teeth. “I like that you think that’s a possibility. C’mon, Spiderman.”

Well, Peter never needed much of an invitation. He ran forward, arm cocking back to throw a punch at the last moment. He was still telegraphing his motions too much for someone with his strength; Matt easily dodged the punch and kicked out, sweeping Peter’s legs out from under him. Peter shot webbing at a taller building across the street, catching himself suspended at the last second.

Matt tugged lightly on the webbing. “What’ve I told you?”

“Not to rely on webs when we’re sparring,” Peter mumbled. “It’s just instinct.”

“Instinct is only useful if you can control it. Try again.”

With a growl that sounded much less threatening than Peter probably thought, he did. He flipped in close to throw a series of punches. Matt dodged or parried them all, but he couldn’t help appreciating that Peter was carefully avoiding attacking anywhere near Matt’s left arm.

Still. “We’re not boxing, kid. Use your legs.” When Peter kicked out, Matt stepped fluidly backwards. “Watch out, Dex,” he tossed over his shoulder.

But Dex didn’t move. Instead, his heart started racing.

“Dex?” Matt tried to skip around him, but apparently that was still too close because Dex stiffened, feet shifting into a defensive stance. One hand formed a fist near his chin while the other reached for where his gun used to be holstered. The air became laced with the scent of his panic.

Peter skidded to a stop.  “Whoa, man, you okay?”

Keeping himself between them, Matt faced Dex, careful not to touch him. “Agent—” He cut himself off as he heard Dex’s breath catch, then steady out. Like he’d latched onto the title and was using it to anchor himself. “Agent,” Matt repeated carefully. “Do you know what’s happening?”

Dex’s hands slowly dropped to his sides. “Roof. You’re sparring.”

Yeah, and that was clearly over. Jerking his chin at Peter, Matt kept his voice even. “Think we’re done for the night, kid. I’ll see you next time.”

Peter didn’t even protest, probably because he could smell Dex’s fear almost as well as Matt could. He swung off the edge of Matt’s apartment; a few minutes later, Matt felt his phone vibrate as it received texts.

Matt kept his focus on Dex. “You all right?”

“Nothing,” Dex snapped.

Matt blinked, but thought better of questioning him. Instead, he let Dex set the pace—a rapid pace—to the door to Matt’s apartment, and down the stairs into the living room where Dex started hovering by the window, stalking back and forth, pausing once in awhile to crane his neck like he was trying to see further than the window would allow.

Keeping his own movements inobtrusive, Matt gave him space. There was a stack of mail on the kitchen counter, which Matt began slowly sorting through. His fingers stilled over an unusually thick envelope.

It smelled like Fisk.

Feeling his own pulse quicken, Matt slid it open and ran his fingers over raised letters glued to a page.

_Please consider this first warning a courtesy call._

Matt grabbed his day phone, ignoring the way Dex’s footsteps stuttered at the sudden movement. “Call Foggy,” he ordered the phone, holding it up to his ear, tapping the fingers of his other hand against the counter until Foggy answered. “Are you okay?”

“I’m guessing you picked up your mail today,” Foggy said grimly. “What, did he write it in braille?”

“You guys need to go somewhere else. A motel or something.”

“Yeah, cool,” Foggy said, and there was something dangerous in his voice that Matt wasn’t used to hearing. “But I wanna talk to him first.”

“What?” That kind of stupidity was supposed to be reserved for Karen and Matt. Foggy was supposed to be the voice of reason that they both studiously ignored. “No.”

“Say that again and I’m hanging up on you,” Foggy said tersely. “I have the right to yell at him as much as you have the right to punch him.”

“Foggy, you can’t. he’ll kill you then and there.”

“I mean, probably not, since he’s not running this particular jail.”

Panic constricted Matt’s chest. “Foggy, please.”

“You can come with, if it makes you feel better. I’m gonna call the prison.”

“Foggy, don’t—”

 _Click_.

Matt threw his phone at the wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we have a major character death coming up in the next, um, thirty or so chapters. Do you want me to drop a warning on that specific chapter? The lack of a warning could lower the stakes for all the other chapters, but that way you can, you know, have some chocolate ready before reading The Chapter. Or I could just surprise you all. What's your preference?


	9. I Think We Both Want Harmony Now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Sing" by Mae and I can't find a youtube video for it but it's basically my Matt+Stone song, if any of you are interested.
> 
> In other news, I keep forgetting that Matt has a broken arm. Just fyi, since Karen isn't at his apartment, he had to ask Foggy to fix his tie for him.
> 
> Oh, and I don't know any Italian at all so please yell at me if I got it wrong.

Foggy

“We need to make this fast,” Matt was murmuring as they stood outside the prison. He said he’d left Dex tied up in his apartment, and unconscious for good measure, but Foggy was willing to bet that wasn’t the only reason he was interested in getting in and out as quickly as possible. “Don’t assume this isn’t his turf, and if _anything_ feels off, you need to get out of there.”

“Speaking of getting out of there, and I’m _very_ glad you brought this up…” Foggy pulled the piece of paper out of his pocket and thrusting it into Matt’s hands. “Feel that?”

Matt immediately looked exasperated. “Paper.”

“It’s the Bad Decision Spectrum because you promised—”

“You broke into my house,” Matt cut in.

“You promised me you didn’t need it anymore and then you went and tried to beat up Wilson Fisk!” Foggy forced Matt’s hand down the paper. “New rule. You’re not allowed to fight Fisk.”

Matt pulled back. “I’ve fought him before and walked away.”

“Cut to shreds and bleeding.”

“That was Nobu, not F—”

“It’s the _same thing_ , Matt.”

“I’m not saying I’ll seek him out like that again, but if I get a shot, I’ll take it.”

“Fine,” Foggy said faux-pleasantly, because he knew how to negotiate. “You’re not allowed to fight Fisk in any location where he might have the upper hand. Like a prison cell where you _can’t get away_.”

“Clearly, I could get away, though.”

In lieu of hitting Matt’s broken arm, Foggy dropped everything. Just everything on the ground, turned around, and started walking in the other direction.

Matt picked up the paper and caught up. “All right, I deserved that. But for the record, _this_ —” He gestured back towards the prison, “is also a terrible idea.”

“We don’t know that yet.”

“ _Yet_.”

Foggy faced him. “Look, man. You and Stone are doing a good job keeping Melvin Potter and Dex away from Fisk, but so far that hasn’t gotten us any closer to figuring out what Fisk’s plan actually is.”

“And you think confronting him is gonna make him spill his guts?”

“You only sound so incredulous because your definition of confrontation is ‘punching the other person in the face.’” Foggy clapped him on the shoulder. “Might as well admit it, my friend: I’m more of a people person.”

Matt huffed. “You think you can trip Fisk up with, what, your _charm?_ ”

“You’re getting dangerously close to offending me and my charm, Murdock.”

Matt did that broody jaw-clenching thing and fell silent, probably because he didn’t want to rock the boat and risk Foggy deciding to go talk to Fisk alone. Nice of him not to push it, since if Foggy was really being honest, the full explanation for his plan was…embarrassing. See, Matt and Stone got to run around doing things—dealing with Melvin and Dex, watching over people—and Karen got to research whatever weird thing she was researching. But Foggy? Foggy was a sitting duck. And everyone knew what happened to sitting ducks.

He wanted to _contribute_.

But when he stepped into the meeting room and actually saw Fisk, he was wondering if maybe ducks were smarter than they were letting on. Matt, of course, slid into the chair right across from Fisk like he wasn’t afraid of anything. Foggy wasn’t so bold. He remained standing behind his chair. Did he look like a coward? Maybe, but only compared to Matt, and everyone looked like a coward compared to Matt.

“Mr. Fisk,” Foggy began.

“Franklin Percy Nelson,” Fisk said.

Okay, throwing the middle name in was a low and very creepy blow, but it annoyed Foggy enough that he stood up straighter. “Mr. Fisk, we don’t want to overstay our welcome here, so let’s get to the good stuff. We got your letter. Just curious, but what exactly was that supposed to accomplish besides pissing us off?”

Fisk’s beady eyes darted between them. “I don’t actually believe you expect me to answer that.”

“No, seriously,” Foggy said. “This is the part where you monologue.”

His upper lip curled in an imitation of a smile. “I’m sorry to disappoint, Mr. Nelson, but if we are relying on tired clichés, you should reevaluate the role you play. I am not the villain in this story. Not anymore.” His eyes slid over to rest on Matt. “Your partner confessed to his role in my wife’s murder.”

Somehow, Foggy got the sense that pointing out his wife’s role in the distribution of illicit and dangerous drugs wouldn’t be well-received. But that was fine—Foggy wasn’t playing defense here.

If there was one thing he was good at, it was getting people to talk. Even hostile witnesses. And the fact that Fisk sent those letters meant that he wanted Matt and Foggy to be scared. So Foggy tried to copy Matt’s fearlessness. “Mr. Fisk, are you aware that with your wife dead, you’re rotting away in prison for nothing?”

Matt’s jaw clenched, a silent warning which Foggy ignored.

Fisk just regarded Foggy in much the same way as Foggy imagined a venomous snake might look at a tiny kitten.

Shoving the disturbing mental imagery out of his head—why, brain, _why?_ —Foggy risked leaning forward against the back of his chair. “We’re lawyers, Mr. Fisk. It takes a lot more than a few words to bother us.”

“Oh,” Fisk said softly, “I will avenge Vanessa with far more than words.”

Well, Fisk might be smarter, and even in prison he might be better-connected, and he might even be able to hold his own against Matt in a fight in the right circumstances, but there was one area where he was completely outgunned: the law. The law was Foggy’s dominion. “You’re in a cage, Mr. Fisk, and the best lawyer in the world won’t be able to get you out of it. And let me give you some free legal advice: sending threatening letters doesn’t exactly help your case.”

Fisk narrowed his eyes.

“In fact, we’ll take every single move you make against us and turn it into evidence against you until you’re stripped of every privilege not explicitly protected by the eighth amendment.”

“I thought you were a defense lawyer, Mr. Nelson.” Fisk’s voice was almost painfully quiet. “You might consider focusing your energies where they belong.”

“You already tried to smear my name,” Matt cut in, chin raised, disgust on his face. “It didn’t work. See, prosecutors know fat cats like you will say anything to buy yourselves a lighter sentence. So why don’t you save us all some time and just back off.”

Something dangerous shifted in Fisk’s expression. “For once in your life, Mr. Murdock, this isn’t about you.”

Foggy zeroed in on that shift. “Keep telling yourself that. We all know you’re obsessed with him.”

“You flatter him,” Fisk growled.

Foggy shrugged. “I mean, _I_ wasn’t the one who beat your face in—twice now—and kept Agent Nadeem alive long enough for him to expose all your sordid crimes.”

Fisk stood up so suddenly that his cuffs cut into his wrists. “This isn’t about me, either. This is about _Vanessa_. I need you to understand that.”

Oh, did he? Time to play dumb, then.

“About Vanessa,” Matt began. “You know it was just a matter of time before I—”

Fisk’s face was reddening. “This isn’t about you!”

Standing in the middle of a prison, Matt couldn’t exactly insist again that he was the one who killed Vanessa and therefore all of this _was_ about him, but his wicked smile made his point—he wasn’t conceding anything.

“Yeah, it kinda seems like it is,” Foggy said blithely.

Veins stood out in Fisk’s neck. “Vanessa was murdered by Karen Page Murdock, and when she sees me face-to-face, she’ll wish the car accident that took her brother’s life took hers with him!”

“You won’t even get close,” Matt snarled, but Foggy was distracted.

Because there it was.

It wasn’t Fisk’s entire plan, no. But they knew his goal now, and they could work backwards from there. Fisk’s target was Karen, not Matt.

And Fisk wanted to kill her himself.

 

Stone

He still had the drawing Ella made for him, tucked in his pocket. There was absolutely no reason to keep it and Stick would not have understood. But he couldn’t bring himself to throw it away.

She was staying at Maeva Vallier’s parents’ house. Of the different places they kept her, Stone preferred this one. It was a few miles outside of Hell’s Kitchen, in a sleepy older neighborhood for the elderly where something like a gunshot would not go unnoticed. Not even a stranger would go unnoticed, unless the stranger happened by at night.

In which case Stone would certainly notice.

Now, for instance, he was settled on the roof across the street, a thermos of coffee in one hand and his sword in the other with a compound bow at his feet. It was a relief to be out of his apartment, but he wondered if Matty realized that Stone had left Karen alone, if Matty would throw a fit about it the next time they spoke.

Which wouldn’t be any time soon, unless something went wrong and they needed each other.

Maybe, when all of this was over, they could go parkouring together again. Or sparring—not training, since Matty had learned everything Stone knew; he just needed more practice to reach Stone’s familiarity.

But for now, there were worse ways to spend is night. Stone allowed himself to meditate as the hours ticked by.

His eyes snapped open at the sound of quiet, deliberate footsteps approaching. There: a shadow moving through the neighbor’s yard. Lithe, feminine, and dressed in dull olive green. Stone sat up straighter. He heard the all-too-familiar _clink_ of knives and he smelled the sweet aroma of devil’s hell.

That was enough evidence to launch his own attack, wasn’t it? Stone drew an arrow, clicked the back of the bow onto the string, locking the trigger release in place. He drew back, centered the scope on his target, and let fly.

The arrow sunk into his target’s upper thigh. Not bad. He’d been aiming for the knee, but archery wasn’t his forte. His target didn’t scream; she simply rolled into the bushes next to the neighbor’s home and disappeared.

Preferring to get in close, Stone flipped down off the roof and sprinted across the street. She sprang from the bush to meet him, knife flashing. But the blade was a distraction: the real threat was the needle gripped in her fist.  Lovely. Stone hated fighting needles.

He blocked her arm at the wrist while his other hand spun the sword, slapping the blade against her knife. She lost her grip and Stone swiftly kicked the knife away, drawing one of his own knives from its sheath.

She scuttled backwards, favoring her uninjured leg. “You on guard duty?” she panted.

In answer, Stone strode forward again, swinging his sword but not attacking, just driving her further away from Ella’s house.

“No one said anything about a guy with a sword,” she pressed.

“Piteous intel on your part, then.” He feinted to the left, then to the right, just to keep her on her toes, but he was trying to figure out what he was supposed to do with her after the battle. Assuming he couldn’t secure her arrest (and assuming he left her alive), he was not looking forward to adding a third ward in addition to Dex and Melvin.

She stopped her retreat, shifting forward, testing him.

Stone sighed. “Let’s not do this.”

Something dark lit up her eyes. Suddenly, she shoulder-rolled forward like she didn’t care about his sword. Stone jumped backwards, trying to fend her off without killing her. His blade sliced across her back, but it wasn’t enough to keep her from stabbing her needle into his leg.

This was why he hated needles.

He spun his sword at her arm and she snatched her hand away, still gripping the needle. He’d gotten, what, half a dose? Well, Stone was just going to have to deal with that later. And he was done being careful. He raised his sword, but she ducked in even closer, under his arm, too close for the sword to do any good.

The knife in Stone’s other hand sank into her chest.

Jerking the knife back out again, Stone leaned heavily against the fence, trying to catch his breath, and listened as she bled out. This was going to frighten someone tomorrow. He nudged the body behind a shed. Maybe Matty could take care of it so it didn’t give one of the residents an untimely heart attack.

Unfortunately, Stone couldn’t hide the body from Matty. He’d smell it immediately and realize what happened. But Matty wouldn’t be so disgusted as to leave Stone here to die, would he? Not from devil’s hell, of all things?

Stone should’ve thought to get Karen’s number. She was certainly less self-righteous. Or…or he could’ve asked for Claire’s. Then again, Stone wasn’t actually confident about Claire’s perspective on killing. She was a nurse, so he suspected that she was more on Matty’s end of the spectrum.

Perfect. He closed his eyes, leaning fully against the fence now.

But there was really nothing for it. Stone listened to the ringing in his head, matched by the ringing of the phone he now pressed to his ear.

“Stone?” Matty’s voice was sharp and… _concerned_. About Karen, probably. “What’s wrong?”

“I…” _I need help._ Three words should not be so difficult to say.

“Where are you? Where’s Karen?”

Ah, yes. Matty would be furious that Stone had left Karen alone. Stone shouldn’t have called. Would Matty even get here in time? Stone wasn’t as intimately aware of the symptoms of devil’s hell, but his balance was quickly leaving him, which could not possibly bode well. He slid down the fence to sit on the cold grass, closer to the smell of blood.

“Stone, what happened? Where are you?”

“Karen’s fine,” Stone mumbled. “So’s Ella.” There, that was all Matty was worried about anyway. “I’m just…checking in.”

“No, something’s wrong.” Matty couldn’t hear Stone’s heartbeat, but apparently Matty could still read Stone’s voice. “Are you all right?”

It was too much, and Stone’s hand was shaking anyway. He hung up, dropped the phone on the grass. Was quite content to just stay here, but then…Ella would recognize his body in the morning, and he preferred that he not add to her traumatization anymore than he had already. So Stone pushed himself up against the fence until he could get to his feet and staggered aimlessly a few houses down. There was another shed. Why were suburban Americans so obsessed with sheds? Stone slipped into the gap between the shed and the fence and sat down, pulling his knees to his chest. He felt oddly like a spider curling up to die.

He breathed in deeply, counting the racing beats of his heart. Meditation hadn’t helped Matty and Matty was far better at it than Stone. But it was all he could think to do.

 

Matt

Something was really wrong. He halted his patrol to call Karen, who dodged his questions until he shouted that something happened to Stone. Only then did she admit that Stone wasn’t there.

Great, it was a whole conspiracy. Why was he even surprised anymore?

“Where’d he go?” Matt demanded.

“I don’t know! The library?”

“The—what?”

“He wanted to go to the library and he wanted to check on Ella. That’s all I know, Matt, I swear.”

Great. Matt called Micah next, knowing he was about to send him into a panic.

“I need to know where Ella is.”

“At her grandmother’s,” he answered immediately. “What happened?”

“I don’t know, maybe nothing, but I’m going there now.” Somehow, that was all that Matt felt he had time for. He knew how to get there; he’d made sure of it as soon as he realized Micah and Maeva were planning to have Ella stay there.

Every second that ticked by on his route to Ella’s grandparents felt like his own personal failure. When he finally got to there, the neighborhood was ominously quiet, and something in Matt was screaming that he was too late. If everything was quiet, it meant he was either in the wrong place or whatever had happened had…already happened.

No, he wasn’t in the wrong place. His stomach flipped as he caught the scent of devil’s hell. Fading now.

Too late, then. He was too late.

Beneath the stronger aroma there was blood. A stranger’s blood? And Stone’s.

Scent was closely connected to memory. Just breathing in devil’s hell now was pulling him back to the nightmares, both imagined from when he’d been dosed and real—when Ella had been dosed. But Matt could not panic right now. Breathing in through his nose so at least he wouldn’t have to taste it, he sprinted towards Ella’s house. But everything there seemed fine. All the occupants were asleep and no one was there who shouldn’t be. So what…?

There was…something in the bushes. Blood. The smell of a person, but no breathing, no heartbeat, no….

Oh.

Matt clenched his jaw. The person was dead and Matt was pretty sure he knew who was responsible. But if the person was dead, there was…nothing Matt could do. Nothing that had to be done urgently, anyway.

Was that why Stone called? To, what, apologize?

And then he’d taken off. Matt didn’t particularly want to follow him, didn’t want to have the inevitable argument. But why hadn’t Stone stuck around to get rid of the body? This was the kind of sloppiness Stick beat out of both of them. They were supposed to clean up their messes, to not leave a trail, to not arouse suspicion. Kicking a body under some bushes just didn’t cut it.

Something was very wrong.

Stone’s scent still lingered, but it was easier to track devil’s hell. Matt followed the stronger aroma a few houses down until he was close enough to catch the rapid heartbeat. Now Matt started sprinting again, ducking into a backyard to find Stone huddled behind a shed. He’d ripped off his jacket and was sinking his teeth into the twisted-up sleeve to keep from screaming.

“How much?” Matt hissed.

Stone didn’t answer. Possibly he couldn’t. Besides, full dose or not, it didn’t matter, did it? Matt couldn’t fight off devil’s hell for him. Instead, Matt grabbed Stone’s hand and held it to his heart, which was racing but not as fast as Stone’s.

“Stone, concentrate. Focus on me.” But he couldn’t keep grounding Stone when he needed his good hand to call Claire. As soon as she answered, he explained the situation in terse sentences. She promised to come with a car. He promised to make it up to her. She said she doubted that even he could think of a way to make up for her ruined sleep schedule.

Stone started shifting, each motion slow and jerky at the same time, like he was trying to be covert and failing. His hand edged towards his belt where Matt knew for a fact there was a knife.

“Not happening,” Matt told him crisply, grabbing his wrist. Stone’s whole body twisted as he threw an elbow straight into Matt’s jaw, but Matt preferred blunt force trauma to a knife in the gut, so he took the hit while he yanked the knife out of Stone’s belt and threw it over his shoulder. Hopefully no kid would find it tomorrow. But now he was thinking about all the other knives Stone definitely had on him. He was practically bathed in the scent of metal. Rolling his throbbing jaw, Matt took a deep breath, put his hands on Stone’s chest, and _shoved_.

In his weakened state, Stone fell backwards onto the ground. Seizing the opportunity, Matt swiftly straddled him, using his knees to pin Stone’s shoulders into the dirt and pressing his right forearm against Stone’s throat. Matt skated his other hand along the belt until he found two more knives, throwing them aside like the first. There were two remaining: one strapped to Stone’s left thigh, the other at his right ankle. Both were out of reach for now, but he didn’t want to risk it, not when Claire was on her way.

“Stay still,” Matt ordered, not that he expected Stone to listen. But when Matt shifted his weight off, Stone didn’t thrash or try to escape. Instead, the other man sat up slowly and seemed to be holding his breath. He flinched when Matt relieved him of the two final knives, but he didn’t resist.

Instead, his hand twitched towards Matt. “Gio?”

Matt’s stomach dropped.

Stone’s voice was full of confusion, but there was something else, too, something Matt recognized from dreams when he saw his dad’s face again. “Gio?”

Whatever it was, Matt didn’t want to take that away from him. So Matt reached back and grasped Stone’s forearm, let Stone drag himself closer, swaying slightly as he fought for balance. “Not Gio,” Matt said quietly. “Just me.”

He doubted Stone could hear or understand. Stone rested his forehead against Matt’s, his hand mussing Matt’s hair. “ _Mi sei mancato._ ”

No idea what that meant, Matt held perfectly still. Whatever Stone was hallucinating, it didn’t seem particularly terrifying, which was better than—

The tang of salty tears suddenly filled the air as Stone gripped Matt’s shoulders. “ _No, smettila, Stick! No, smettila, lascialo stare. Per cortesia. Per cortesia. Per cortesia—_ ”

A car pulled up behind them. “What’s he saying?”

Matt jumped at Claire’s voice over his shoulder. He’d been so focused on Stone that he hadn’t noticed. “I look like I speak Italian?”

She crouched beside them. “Can you move him?”

“I got rid of all his knives, if that’s what you’re asking.”

She nodded curtly. “Get him in the car, then.”

“Where’re we going?”

“We’re not,” she said grimly. “No time for that. But we can’t do this here in someone’s backyard.”

Matt wasn’t really in a position to argue with her. This wasn’t going to be easy, but when did that ever matter to him? He slid his good arm around Stone, jerking his head back when Stone lashed out. It was a clumsy strike, barely catching Matt’s ear.

“Don’t fight me, c’mon.” Matt pulled Stone upright, dodging Stone tried to kick at him. “C’mon, same team here.”

Claire already had the car door open. Hauling Stone closer, Matt couldn’t really defend himself with only one functional arm, but Stone’s strikes were getting weaker by the second. It wasn’t too hard to manhandle Stone into the backseat, shutting the door to lock both of them inside. Matt couldn’t breathe without choking on the scent of fear. Was this what _he’d_ been like?

Both Claire and Stone—and, to a lesser extent, Foggy and Marci and Karen—had seen him like that. But it didn’t seem to have changed anything.

Balancing on the arm rest between the two front seats, Claire thrust something at Matt. “Hold the light for me.” He tried to point the flashlight at Stone’s face, but Claire gave a frustrated hiss, stole it, flipped it around, and handed it back.

Stone pressed against the back of the seat as soon as Matt aimed the flashlight towards him. “Turn it off! Shut it off! _Smettila!_ ”

Ah, right. Light sensitivity. Sounded rough. Matt aimed the light slightly away from Stone’s face.

“Hey.” Claire’s voice was firm. “Listen to me.” But when she put a hand on his leg, he jerked backwards so forcefully that the car rocked as he slammed into the window. “ _¡Escuchame!_ ”

Stone froze, head tilted.

“Emiliano,” she said clearly. “I’m not gonna hurt you.” She held out her hand. “Two pills, that’s all. They’ll calm your heart so you don’t die here in my car. Understand?”

Stone’s ragged breathing told Matt that none of his fears were assuaged. Matt shifted closer. “Stone. It’s me. You know I wouldn’t hurt you, right?”

He did, didn’t he? Carefully, Matt moved Stone’s hand until Stone’s fingers were pressed to the pulse at Matt’s neck. It seemed to calm him down enough that he obediently swallowed the pills, which was pretty impressive if Stone’s mouth was half as dry as Matt remembered.

It would take a while to kick in, though. In the meantime, Stone reacted to some new nightmare: he tore the hand against Matt’s neck away to clench it into a fist. Matt pinned the arm down before Stone could lash out, and shifted until he could check Stone’s knee with his hip when Stone tried to kick out.

Stone didn’t scream though, despite the fact that he must be terrified. Matt almost wished he would. Instead, Stone seemed to realize he was beaten. He flattened down into the seat, teeth clenched, entire body braced for pain. Was that what Stick trained his advanced students to do when there was really no way out? Just lie down and endure whatever was coming, but keep their mouths shut while they were at it?

“Can I take his pulse, or will he break my arm?” Claire asked.

“Not sure,” Matt admitted. He paused, listening and counting. “Just over a hundred beats per minute, but it’s slowing down.”

She swept her hair out of her face. “All right. Good.”

“Not good. His resting heartrate is closer to forty, like mine.”

“Still good, given the circumstances. Keep an ear on it, but…” She let out a tired sigh. “Could’ve been worse. At least he wasn’t stabbed.”

Stone had killed his opponent before she’d had the chance to stab him, but did Claire need to know that? He turned his head towards her. “So…the Spanish?”

She shrugged. “He asked me about it while you were passed out from devil’s hell. I don’t know why he cared, but I thought it might snap him out of whatever hallucination he was in.”

“Well,” he muttered, “I think it worked.”

“I’m smart like that.” The tired smile was clear in her voice.

Matt tilted his head, catching the moment that Stone slipped away from consciousness. “Stone’s out. If I get off him, do you want a seat?” She couldn’t be comfortable squished there on the floor.

“I mean, if you’re offering.” Thus they embarked on a mission to maneuver around Stone’s unconscious body in the cramped car. It might’ve been awkward if they weren’t both clinical in how they usually approached a human body (she to heal, he to harm). Or if she weren’t all too familiar with most of his body anyway.

Finally situated on the floor, Matt pulled his knees up to his chest with his head close to Stone, listening to his breathing, listening as Claire slumped between Stone’s feet. “Better?” he asked.

“Don’t let me fall asleep here,” she mumbled. “I’ve got work in the morning.”

He felt a pang of guilt. “You don’t need to stay. I can take care of it from here.”

“Just until his heartrate’s settled. Tell me if it spikes.” She leaned her head against the back of the seat. A moment later, she spoke again. “What was he even doing out here?”

Matt jerked his head towards the neighborhood. “Ella’s staying with her grandparents.”

“And he was…babysitting?”

Matt bit out a dry laugh. “Don’t let him hear you call it that. He lectures me enough as it is for caring about people who…” He trailed off.

“Who what?” she asked suspiciously.

“Who are vulnerable.”

Claire pointedly tapped the seat beside Stone’s head. “Tell me who that doesn’t include.”

Matt’s broken arm throbbed as if in response. He rested his chin on his knees. “Yeah, I’m…starting to get that.”


	10. Who Will Pray for Me Tomorrow?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Who Will Pray?" by We Came as Romans (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_YXu7rlWYA).
> 
> Oh my gosh, guys, this stupid chapter. I rearranged like five scenes trying to get it to work, I'm not kidding. So, um, I hope you like it.

Matt

Claire gestured between them. “So you and him…he said he had a background like yours?”

Shifting where he sat, Matt leaned his head against the back of the passenger seat behind him. “Not really. Just in one way that mattered.”

“The guy who trained you.”

“Yep.” He hesitated. “I’m sorry, Claire. I’m sorry I’ve never told you about him.”

“Why would you need to?” she asked matter-of-factly. “I never asked.”

“But you came face-to-face with some of the worst things he drilled into me.” How many times had she told him not to cut himself off? Warned him that he’d end up alone? Not to mention warning him when she thought he’d go…too far. “I just think you deserved to know, all this time.”

“No one _deserves_ to know anything. It’s your past, your privacy.” She leaned her head against the car seat. “So, with all that in mind, feel free to tell me to shut up and not answer any of my questions, but…” She tapped her foot against Stone’s arm. “This guy. Does he have anyone?”

There was the guilt again. “No,” Matt said quietly. “Just me.”

“But you’re helping him, right? Because it sure seems like he’s trying to…I don’t know. But he’s trying _something_.”

Matt closed his eyes. “I know. I’ve just been so distracted. And…” Might as well call it what it was. Again, it wasn’t like Claire wasn’t painfully well-acquainted with most of Matt’s worst tendencies. “Probably too proud.”

“Proud, huh?” Claire’s voice turned thoughtful. “I guess if I saw someone still struggling with so many of the things I’d already overcome, I might get a bit judgy. But I think I’d also be a sort of scared, actually. Like maybe if I got too close, I’d…fall backwards.”

Matt opened his mouth to argue: no, that wasn’t it, that wasn’t how he felt at all. But then again, he _had_ gotten so far from the influence of Stick’s teaching. Forget just having a law firm, he had a _family_. With a _dog_. And there was a seven-year-old girl that he was emotionally invested in for no good reason.

And, yeah, maybe he’d instinctively felt that straying too close to Stone would break this life Matt had built apart. He still wasn’t sure it wouldn’t. It was a risk. But where would Matt be, if Foggy hadn’t decided to take that same kind of risk with him? Or if Karen hadn’t, or Claire, or, more recently and more explicitly, the Valliers? Micah, who’d had every opportunity and every reason to decide that Matt wasn’t worth the danger?

Claire was still waiting for a response, or maybe lost in thought herself. Matt sniffed. “Yeah. Maybe.”

“Hey.” Claire lifted her head a bit. “No pressure, but I’m glad he has you. Maybe you’re not best friends, but at least he’s got…some picture of what to move towards, right? And some picture of what he’ll enjoy if he gets there.”

Matt raised his eyebrows. “You’re really leaning into this whole role model idea.”

“What can I say? I see the potential in both of you.”

Matt smirked slowly.

“What?” she demanded.

Normally, giving Stone away would be a violation of an ancient code. However, Claire was basically his sister, so Matt double-checked that Stone was unconscious before turning his head so Claire could read the honesty in his face. “You know that whole…thing that I have? A wife, a dog, a—you know, a kid?”

“Yes, Matt. I am aware.”

He lowered his voice, not that it would make a difference. “Pretty sure Stone wouldn’t be opposed to having that with you.”

“Yes, Matt,” she said dryly. “I am aware.”

“Wait, _what?_ ”

“He hasn’t said anything,” she went on hurriedly. “I’m just good at reading people. Especially weird vigilantes. You guys aren’t half as mysterious as you like to think.”

“But you wouldn’t…you wouldn’t…” If she’d thought _he_ was too unstable, Stone had no chance at all. Right?

“Well,” she said with slowness that was definitely deliberate, “he’s a lot less self-destructive than you are. I think, if it weren’t for his training, that he’d be, um…”

“Smarter?” Matt suggested, wounded.

“Calmer.”

“Claire. We parkour over rooftops together. He taught me how to use knives.”

“I’m just telling you what I think. And I guess I had enough time in Sunday School to agree with your whole everyone-can-be-redeemed thing, so…”

“So he _does_ have a shot?” Matt demanded, while part of his brain tried to figure out how he’d come to be having girl talk with Claire in the back of her car while Stone was passed out across the seat.

“Not anytime soon, no.” She paused. “But he is cuter than you, so there’s that.”

“Claire.” Maybe he shouldn’t be saying this. Maybe Claire didn’t need to know. Or maybe she did. “He kills people. He killed someone _tonight._ ”

She merely hummed in response.

“Claire?”

“I don’t owe you my opinion on that.”

Ouch. He rolled his eyes up towards the roof of the car. “I’m allowed to worry about you.”

“You can—” Her voice started off sarcastic, probably about to tell him where he could shove his worry, before turning into something more sincere. “You can keep doing that, actually.”

 

Morning dawned outside the car about half an hour after Claire finally called for a taxi, leaving Matt with aftercare instructions since she had to get to work. Matt assumed this meant that the danger to Stone really had passed, but he still couldn’t relax. He eventually gave up on maintaining his cramped position on the floor and moved to sit more comfortably in the passenger seat, his neck already ached.

Matt leaned at a different angle against the headrest. How had he ended up here? Sitting in a borrowed car, watching over another person trained by Stick not because Matt saw Stick’s old student as a threat but because Matt saw Stone as…Maggie was right. As a friend. Or something.

In the backseat, Stone’s breathing started to change. A few moments later, there was a stirring sound as he sat up. Matt twisted so Stone could see his face past the passenger seat. “I wouldn’t try to move too much if I were you. It’ll just make the headache worse.”

Stone mumbled something in Italian.

Silence fell between them, which was…not great. Not great for Stone, anyway, because his shaky breathing suggested that he was reliving everything he’d experienced from devil’s hell now that there was nothing to distract him. Matt searched for something to say. “So, uh…welcome to the club.”

“Club,” Stone rasped.

“The devil’s hell club. You, me, Ella. We should all go get ice cream or something.”

“Milk from three different dairies,” Stone muttered, almost dreamlike.

Maybe not ice cream, then.

“Ella,” Stone said suddenly, his hair brushing the seat as he lifted his head. “She’s all right?”

Matt blinked at the realization that he’d been so focused on finding Stone that he hadn’t actually checked. But nothing had seemed off around her house. “She’s fine.”

Stone’s heartrate quickened. “You’re lying.”

“No,” Matt said hurriedly. “I didn’t hear or smell anything wrong around her house. No devil’s hell, no blood. I just—there wasn’t time to go talk to her, I had to take care of you.”

“You…” Stone sounded bewildered, like some crucial premise was collapsing under his conclusions. Clearing his throat, he sat up painstakingly. “Claire was here.”

“Just long enough to get you stabilized. She still has a job. You get used to it, though.”

“Used to what?”

“Her swooping in to save your life, then ducking out to save everyone else’s.” Matt rubbed tiredly at his eyes. “She deserves about a thousand vacation days.”

“She left her car?”

Matt shrugged. “You needed it more than she did. You can pay her back for her taxi ride, as long as you do it legally. And…between the two of us, you’re probably better positioned to drive the car back to her place.”

“I don’t have her address.”

Matt held out a scrap of paper Claire had given him. “You do now.” But he pulled it back when Stone reached for it. “Listen, just…this doesn’t mean you get to show up whenever you want. Got it?”

“I’m very certain that’s none of your business.” Besides, they both knew Stone could track Claire down on his own if he wanted. Matt couldn’t help feeling a tiny bit impressed that he hadn’t yet.

“And you don’t get to listen in on her or something just because you’re in the area,” Matt pressed. “And don’t…don’t…” He was so bad at this. “Don’t even _bother_ trying to get to know her if you’re just bored or something, because—”

Stone chuckled wickedly. “You’re referring to knowledge in the Biblical sense?”

Matt snatched Claire’s penlight and shone it directly in Stone’s eyes, causing the other man to writhe away from the light. “Still sensitive?” Matt asked.

“ _Cretino_ , no one likes having a flashlight in their eyes!”

Matt clicked it off. “What were you doing out here?”

Groaning, Stone stretched himself out on the seat. “You know what.”

“I know you were watching Ella, but why? What tipped you off?”

“If Fisk wants to hurt you, she’s by far the easiest target.”

Something cold raced down Matt’s spine. It didn’t make sense. “But Fisk doesn’t want to hurt me. Or, well, he wants to hurt Karen more. And Karen barely knows Ella.”

“He might simply be testing the boundaries, determining which people you’re prioritizing for protection.” Stone gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Or perhaps he’s decided to do whatever it takes to destabilize you so he can get to Karen without you in the way. But to answer your question, the timing was a lucky guess on my part.”

“Who was it?”

Stone didn’t have to ask what he meant. “I don’t know. A woman. Trained. Armed with knives and a syringe.”

“Did…did you have to kill her?”

Stone was quiet for a moment. “I’m not sure. She, ah…she stabbed me first. And devil’s hell, it…you know…”

Matt closed his eyes. Maybe anyone else in Stone’s position would’ve killed the woman, but Stone was better than that. Stone was trained. If Stone was close enough for a killing strike, Stone could’ve incapacitated her in those few minutes he had before devil’s hell set in.

“It was sudden,” Stone said silently.

In other words, Stone hadn’t confronted her with the intention of killing her. That…that did make things a bit better, although the life was still gone either way.

“Well, Mathew.” Stone pushed himself more upright. “I suppose—”

“Matthew?” Matt interrupted.

Stone held still. “You prefer Matty?”

“I don’t prefer Matthew.” That was what Maggie called him. Or Foggy occasionally, when he was trying to make a point. Matt changed the subject. “How’d you even get hit? Was she that good?”

“I was _trying_ to spare her life.”

He blinked. “…So?”

“So it’s rather harder to fight while making a conscious effort not to kill.”

“Well, yeah, but you still must’ve been better than she was.”

Stone grunted annoyedly. “She did that stupid thing you always do where you decide you don’t care about getting injured if it means landing a hit. She rolled forward under my sword.”

Oh. Maybe she was stupid, or maybe she was desperate, or maybe… “She figured out you were trying not to kill her.”

Stone tilted his head.

It was probably inappropriate, but Matt started laughing. “Stone, you can’t let them _know_ you’re trying not to kill them. Geeze.”

“My mistake,” Stone snapped. “I didn’t realize there was a manual on fighting with half measures.”

Half measures. Those were Stick’s words, not Stone’s, and Matt was entirely certain that Stone was only using them as a defense. After all, he _had_ tried not to kill Ella’s stalker.

Honestly, Stone was trying a lot of things. Trying to help Matt, trying to guard Karen, trying to do…whatever it was he was doing with Dex. Trying not to kill people. If Maggie was right, and she usually was, it was because Stone wanted, for some reason, to be given the chance to stay around. Which meant the power dynamic between Matt and Stone had basically flipped on its head.

“I’m sorry,” Matt said.

Stone coughed lightly. “For?”

Matt angled his face away. “Since you came back to Hell’s Kitchen, I know I haven’t…you’ve helped me, you’ve protected the people I care about, and it must’ve seemed like I took that for granted. I didn’t, I just…there’s been a lot going on.”

“If you’re apologizing for not seeming thankful enough, save your breath. I don’t want your thanks.”

Matt pressed his lips together for a moment. “I’m apologizing for more than that, then. It’s not just the things you’ve done for me. We’re also…look, I don’t know how this works, between us, but…there’s no one else who sees the world the way we do, and—”

“My vision is twenty-twenty, actually.”

Matt swallowed his frustration. He just couldn’t figure out how to say this without sounding like he was in elementary school. _Hi, Stone, sorry I’ve been such a terrible friend. Can we be friends again?_ “Look, when you showed up again, it was really bad timing. I was trying to take care of Peter, and you waltzed in and just killed someone right in front of him. Which wasn’t—”

“I’m sorry,” Stone interrupted quietly.

Matt blinked. “What?”

“I know that bothers you.”

Matt blinked again. “That’s not—that’s not what I’m saying. I just mean—”

“But it does bother you.”

The conversation just took on a whole parallel level that Matt wasn’t sure how to navigate. “Not everyone believes the way I do, Stone. I understand that. I’ll still try to stop you if you do it again,” he added hurriedly. “But it doesn’t mean…” Whatever, he was just going to be honest and if he sounded like he was nine years old again, so be it. “It doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”

Sure enough, Stone let out a startled laugh. “Friends, is it?”

“You’re not just an ally,” Matt said bluntly. “Not anymore. Not to me.”

“Because I protect the people you care about,” Stone said edgily.

Matt gave a small shake of his head. “Because you’re one of the people I care about.”

He could’ve thrown a grenade in this tiny space, and he doubted it would have had a bigger impact.

 

Stone

Under Matty’s supervision, with the added benefit of Matty updating him on the interview with Fisk, he dropped off Claire’s car at her place and broke in to deposit her keys on her counter. But he didn’t linger. He and Matty retreated to the roof, where Stone turned in the direction of his apartment, which suddenly felt very far away.

“Hey,” Matty said quietly from behind him. “You could come back to my place, if you want.”

Stone rubbed at his eyes. “Someone needs to be with Karen.”

“The important thing is that she’s not at my apartment. She can take care of herself.”

Stone cocked his head. Matty sounded utterly certain and his heartbeat didn’t waver. “Then why are you always panicking about her?”

Matty’s response was immediate. “Just because she can doesn’t mean she should have to. Come on.”

Stone was willing to let Matty lead the way to his apartment. Stone _could_ find it, he was sure, but he still felt a bit…disoriented. (Driving probably hadn’t been one of his better ideas, but there’d been no casualties and Matty was in no place to critique him.) Stone was also willing to match Matty’s speed, but Matty set a slow pace.

When they finally stopped outside Matty’s apartment, Stone heard a scrabbling, shuffling sound. As soon as Matty nudged the door open, his dog bounded out onto the roof. Despite the smell, Stone kept forgetting he actually owned a dog as a pet. It was just so…incongruent.

“Hey, girl.” Matty scratched the dog’s neck and ears. “Frank, this is my friend. His name’s Stone.”

 _Friends_. “You know she’s going to die,” Stone said.

Matty looked offended. “Obviously. Labradoodles can live up to fifteen years, but last I checked they’re not immortal.”

Stone followed both of them into the apartment, down the stairs. The couch immediately caught his eye and he resisted the temptation sink onto the cushions. “A dog is a liability.”

“Oh, I know. Foggy and I already had this discussion.”

Stone couldn’t imagine that the fat lawyer knew much about liabilities. “Did you?”

“Yeah, in preparation for the day that some psychic supervillain shows up and figures out both of my identities from reading my dog’s mind.” He knelt on the floor to give the dog his full attention. “But you’d never betray me like that, would you, girl?”

Rolling his eyes, Stone gave into temptation and lowered himself onto the couch. “Where’s Dex?”

“He’s…” Matty stood up with a frown, head tilted. Then his eyes widened.

“Don’t tell me,” Stone muttered.

“I left him on the couch,” Matty whispered.

Because of course Matty would make sure his enemy was comfortable on the couch before knocking him out. “You said you tied him up!”

“I _did_.” Matty swore under his breath.

Stone pushed himself back to his feet. “And you didn’t even notice he was missing until this very moment?” Stone hadn’t noticed either, of course, but Stone wasn’t exactly at his best self just yet. What was Matty’s excuse?

He didn’t offer one. “Stay here. I’m gonna go find him.”

Stay there? Not likely. “I’m coming with you. Your arm’s broken.”

“You’re drugged,” Matty retaliated.

“An excellent argument as to why neither of us should be left alone. Let’s go.”

Matty looked distinctly disgruntled, but he jogged up to open the door to the roof without further protest. Sensible of him, as there was no time to waste with Dex free to roam Hell's Kitchen. Stone shoved the dog backwards with his foot when she tried to dart out ahead of him.

“Don’t kick my dog,” Matty said once the door was closed.

“I didn’t kick it. A kick would involve a more of a snapping motion.”

At that, Matty shoved Stone with _his_ foot, which, fine, was basically a kick, although Stone did not concede the point.

They didn’t speak much as they went. It was midday, and sticking to the rooftops was no reason not to be cautious. Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—Dex’s trail led them to the tunnels under Hell’s Kitchen.

“This brings back memories,” Stone muttered.

Matty was still leading the way. “Smells worse this time around.”

Objectively, he wasn’t wrong. The smell of decay made it clear that no one had ventured down to deal with Madam Gao’s body after they’d left it among her broken paintings. Then again, Stone much preferred that to the scent of heroin. (Giovanni hadn’t overdosed on heroin, but heroin clung to his shirt and his hair after he spent too much time with his so-called friends.)

As they drew closer to the room where they’d left Gao, a subtler scent became apparent: salt. The room smelled of tears, but aside from his heartbeat and uneven breathing, Dex was silent.

Stone drifted closer to Matty. “You have a plan here?” he whispered.

“Knock him out and take him back to my place,” Matty whispered back, “or knock him out and drop him off at the precinct.”

Stone pursed his lips. “Let me talk to him first.”

“What for? Ask him nicely not to run away again?”

Stone folded his arms over his chest.

Matty tipped his head back in frustration. “Stone,” he murmured. “The guy’s a psychopath. Given the chance, he would’ve killed Foggy _and_ Karen _and_ Ella.”

“Not unlike me,” Stone snapped.

To his surprise, Matty didn’t flinch. “Not true. You would’ve hurt them, maybe. Or tried to get them to give up on me. But you wouldn’t have killed them. Besides, you were only like that because of Stick. Dex committed coldblooded murder when he was a _kid_.”

“Not unlike Elektra, then.”

Matty froze. Then his eyes narrowed. Clenching his jaw, he jerked his chin towards the wider room in wordless assent.

Stone trailed his hand against Matty’s arm as he went. He could still hear Matty’s heartbeat, waiting in case something went wrong. But Stone didn’t plan on needing his help. In the main room, Dex was sitting on his knees with his back to Stone, one hand on Gao’s decapitated body, one hand resting tenderly on her forehead. Despite the tears, he didn’t seem distraught.

“Dex,” Stone said slowly.

Dex flinched, but didn’t turn around. “How’d you find me?”

“Scent. Running away really won’t work.”

“This isn’t running away.” Dex stroked his hand down Gao’s cheek. “Trust me, if I was running away, you’d know. And you wouldn’t find me.”

Stone edged closer. “You came here to…say goodbye?”

“She’s not like everyone else, you know. She was _murdered_.”

Somehow, Stone knew that what he meant to say was that everyone else left of their own volition.

“Was it Murdock who killed her?” Dex asked.

Stone stopped. “How should I know?”

Dex’s shoulders sagged. “Yeah.” He lapsed into silence, but his breathing was uneasy; it kept hitching like he was about to say something.

Stone waited, uncertain. If he spoke, would it give Dex permission to speak as well? Or would Dex react like Gio always did—offended, somehow, that Stone thought he could help?

Gio only spoke when Stone was quiet.

“You know when you’re a kid,” Dex said suddenly, “and people ask you what you wanna be when you grow up?”

Stone wet his lips. “Yes.”

“Baseball player. That’s what I told them. That’s what I wanted. I was good at it, too. I could’ve…” His voice faded for a moment. “And then I took those stupid aptitude test things in high school. Said I should work for the government. Police officer, federal agent, soldier. And I figured…I figured I could be the next Captain America, you know?” He managed a quiet, bitter laugh and didn’t move from his position on his knees. “Now look at me.”

Now look at both of them.

“And I keep replaying everything, trying to figure out where it all went wrong, and I _can’t_. I don’t…” He took a deep breath. “I don’t think it was a single moment. I don’t know what it was. Which means…what if everything gets worse? _Again?_ ” Now he turned around, now his eyes searched Stone’s face. “What if _I_ get worse?” His lips twisted. “I don’t know. Is that even possible?”

The fact that he wanted to know the answer to that question suggested that it was. “A worse person than you wouldn’t care one way or the other.”

“Maybe.” Bringing a hand to his mouth, Dex started chewing absently on a fingernail. “Maybe. What’re you doing with me, Stone?”

“I’m keeping you out of prison.”

“Isn’t that where I belong?”

Stone shrugged. “As much as I do.”

Dex’s eyes widened slightly, pitifully hopeful. “Wait, so…you’re like me?”

Well, no, not quite. But Dex certainly had more in common with Stone than with Matty. Trying to ignore the fact that Matty was listening, Stone sat cross-legged in front of Dex. “I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I was young. I read too much, my father said, so much about such different things that I couldn’t pick one thing for myself. But I knew what I _didn’t_ want to be.”

“What’s that?”

“I didn’t want to be like my father.” Stone could almost smell him now, the tangy aftershave, the leftover alcohol on his breath. “His life was never about anything other than himself. He never did anything for any kind of noble cause. I wanted a purpose, a chance to live for something more.”

“How’d that work for you?”

“It worked for a while,” Stone admitted. “I thought it did, at any rate. The problem was that I never bothered to figure out if the cause I’d devoted myself to deserved my loyalty. It gave me a sense of purpose, yes. But purpose can be an illusion.” He glanced up at the dark, curved ceiling above them. “I lost control of my life.”

“You seem to be doing okay,” Dex said cautiously.

“Well.” Stone’s voice was tight. He spoke almost under his breath, though he knew such efforts were in vain. Matty’s hearing was unmatched. “It’s called acting.”

Dex stiffened. “Don’t tell me that.”

Stone tilted his head.

“Tell me it’s working. Tell me there’s a way out of…” He gestured helplessly at the room, splattered with dried blood and dried paint. “This. All this.”

“There is,” Stone said immediately. “I’ve seen it.”

“ _How?_ How do you _get_ there? How do you…” Dex looked back over his shoulder, gaze drifting over Gao’s body. Then he closed his eyes. “Do you try to go forward and be someone new? Do you work backwards, and—and try to undo what you’ve done? I don’t—I can’t—”

“There’s not a formula. I don’t think.”

Dex opened his eyes. “You don’t _think?_ ”

“Well.” Stone lowered his head, let his hair fall in front of his face. “I haven’t seen it in myself.”


	11. The Difference I've Made

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Alive in the Lights" by Memphis May Fire (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPi_ifScn0w).

Matt

Stone was wrong, so wrong it would be laughable if the consequences weren’t potentially disastrous. Holding Matt up as some kind of icon? A pioneer of…what, overcoming personal failure? Yeah, no, that was just dangerous. Matt never had to overcome anything as significant as what either Stone or Dex experienced. Matt’s childhood was tame in comparison. What was a chemical spill compared to a psychological disorder or whatever Dex had? And Matt had never had to worry about keeping a younger brother safe, and Jack was nothing— _nothing_ —like Stone’s dad.

Even without any good excuse, Matt kept making the same mistakes. His still-broken arm throbbed, which almost definitely psychosomatic at this point, an ever-present reminder that even now that he knew better, his first instinct was _still_ to throw himself into harms’ way with complete disregard for how it might affect the people around him. Selfish.

Beyond that, what few things Matt had overcome hadn’t exactly been overcome without pretty much everything going up in flames first.

So, no. Claire could talk about role models all she wanted, and that was fine because _Claire_ didn’t _need_ one.

Matt started slowly backing up. Seemed like Stone had this pretty well handled. Dex sort of trusted him, anyway. Maybe Stone wasn’t a north star, not quite, but Dex didn’t seem to be in a hurry to run away from him

The tunnels were suffocating. Matt struck out towards the nearest exit, where the sounds from above were just a little less stifled and the scents just a little less muted by cold, stale air. Hadn’t been that long ago that he’d been down here with Ella and Stone.

(And Madam Gao. Stone killed her without hesitation, but Stone tried not to kill that assassin sent to Ella. If Stone could change, maybe Dex could, too. Maybe everyone could. That was what Matt said he believed, anyway.)

He hesitated at the mouth of the tunnel. He was still wearing all black from patrol, but the sun was well up now. The streets were busy. Ignoring his stomach as it growled, Matt tucked his mask into his pocket. If he just kept his eyes down, he’d be fine. The all-black ensemble might raise a few eyebrows, but this was New York. From what he remembered as a kid, and from what Foggy told him these days, he’d be far from the weirdest thing these New Yorkers had seen today.

He slipped into the crowd. What was it, lunchtime? Without a cane to warn them off, people jostled him. It was weirdly refreshing to be treated like just another person. He kept his feet moving forward while he listened to snippets of conversation.

“Yeah, it should be in by this weekend.”

“What’s her favorite flavor?”

“Sorry, sorry, I’m running late again, but I swear I’m like five minutes away now.” (Lie.)

“Who? Daredevil?”

Matt cocked his head.

“No one’s seen him for like two weeks. Although I guess that’s the point of going back to the ninja costume, right?”

Not a costume, but all right.

“I hope he’s okay. He saved my mom’s physical therapist. Guy’s a hero.” An indignant sniff. “After everything people said about him when there was that imposter Daredevil running around, I still think this city owes the real one an apology.”

Oh, that was…nice to hear. Matt slowed down. Fisk had manipulated everyone in the city—that was Fisk _did_. No one needed to apologize for that. In fact, Matt could think of one person right now who deserved Daredevil’s apology—not the other way around.

He hadn’t spoken to Melvin since Melvin was released. Which meant he hadn’t spoken to Melvin since abandoning Melvin to the FBI. Maggie and Claire were right to nudge him towards fixing things with Stone, so would they be nudging him to fix things towards Melvin, too, if they only knew?

He’d rather fix things of his own initiative, for once.

First things first, though. It was sheer luck that Stone intervened to protect Ella. Clearly, their strategy of moving her around wasn’t working. And as much as it was a relief to rely on Stone, the two of them were obviously not enough.

Holding his burner to his ear, Matt didn’t bother disguising his voice. “Hey, Brett.”

“Not a good time,” Brett said immediately.

“Yeah, I’ve gotta agree on that one.”

“And yet, you still called me.” There was a rustling sound, followed by the sound of a door swinging shut, and wind.

Matt tilted his head. “You outside?”

“The last thing I need is word getting around that I’m talking to you.”

Well, Matt could call him on either phone. “To _me_ , or…?”

“Both of you,” Brett growled.

Matt blinked. “Wait, really?”

“Like I said—not a good time.”

“I’ll get to the point, then. I need police protection at a house.”

Brett was silent.

“It’s a civilian,” Matt pushed. “A little girl, actually.”

“How’s she in danger?”

“Fisk.”

Brett swore under his breath. “What’s Fisk want with a little girl?”

Matt clenched his jaw. It made sense when he thought Fisk was going after him. Now that he knew Fisk was more interested in Karen, what did that make Ella? Collateral damage? “It’s Ella. Uh…Kyle Conway’s daughter.”

“Great. So it’s got something to do with you.”

Matt’s guts shriveled a little. “Yeah.”

Brett sighed loudly. “All right, I’ll send some officers down to check in, but—”

“No, they have to stay there. Keep an eye on things.”

“I can’t just plant officers wherever you want me to, Murdock. I’m not your personal dispatch.”

“I know,” Matt said quickly. “But I’m telling you, there’s probable cause that a crime is about to—”

“And where do I say this probable cause came from, hmm? An anonymous tip won’t be enough for more than a quick sweep. You want me to attach your name to this?”

Matt held the phone tighter. “Whatever it takes.”

A pause. “You know, I really wasn’t expecting you to agree to that.”

“So you’ll do it?” Matt asked hopefully.

Another sigh. “No. Your name won’t cut it at the station anymore.”

“Use either,” Matt argued.

“Same problem,” Brett snapped.

Wait, what? “Brett—”

“I’ve gotta go. I guess I’ll talk to you soon, though. Oh, and…Murdock?”

Something about Brett’s voice made Matt wary. “Yeah?”

Brett mumbled something that sounded like, _I shouldn’t be saying this_ , but it was too low and fast to be clear. “Just—I’m sorry about what’s coming. That’s all.”

The line went dead.

“Brett!” Matt hit redial. No answer. Typical. Jerking his chin up in frustration, Matt came up with a new strategy, one that was probably better than a police detail anyway, in the long run. The only problem was how guilty he’d feel if something went…wrong.

Who was he kidding? He was going to feel awful if something went wrong no matter what, and Peter had definitely proven himself reliable. Matt sent him a text just before slipping into Melvin’s shop.

Melvin was working on something in the back. Matt wondered absently if he ever took breaks. “Melvin,” he said quietly.

The other man spun around defensively. “It’s you.”

Matt just nodded. This was so much more awkward than he’d expected.

“I heard you took down Fisk.” Melvin shuffled his feet. “Thank you.”

The last thing Matt deserved from Melvin was thanks. “I’m sorry, Melvin. I’m sorry for leaving you behind.”

Melvin shook his head. “You had to get to Betsy. She told me you talked to her, told her to get somewhere safe. You couldn’t have done that if they’d arrested you, too.”

True, but that definitely wasn’t the reason Matt had left. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.

With a jerky shrug, Melvin turned his attention back to whatever he was working on.  It smelled slightly familiar, but not quite. GSR? Laytex? Matt crept closer behind him. “What are you making, Melvin?”

Melvin jumped guiltily. “I’m not supposed to.”

“Not supposed to do what?”

He swallowed audibly. “I’m sorry I made the suit. For F-Fisk. I just didn’t know what to do. He told me…he told me he’d hurt Betsy.”

So why was he making another one? Reaching past Melvin’s shoulder, Matt ran one hand over the hunk of thick material on the worktable, but he kept most of his focus on Melvin. “I understand,” he said softly.

“No, no.” Melvin bowed his head. “I didn’t know what to do.”

“Yeah,” Matt admitted heavily. “I didn’t either.”

Melvin’s head snapped up.

“When I…when I left you back there. I was, uh…” Matt blinked at the memory of the fear, the desperation, and the sense of…complete isolation in the face of Fisk’s vast network. “I wasn’t in a great place. I’m sorry you got hurt because of that.”

“You tried to hurt yourself,” Melvin said suddenly. “Didn’t you?”

“…What?”

Melvin shuffled his feet again, turning the tool he was using, some kind of snips or pliers, over and over in his hands. “There were stories. Someone in a mask fought two criminals, then asked them to finish him off. Wasn’t that you?”

Matt felt cold. “How…how did you hear about that, Melvin?”

“I dunno.” He scratched behind his ear, clearly uncomfortable. “Stories. Word gets around.”

Great. Matt pressed his lips together, utterly unsure what to do with this information.

“Was that you?”

Matt could say no and it wouldn’t even necessarily be a lie. Sure, it was Matt, but Matt hadn’t been _himself_. But that line of reasoning wouldn’t stand up in court, and somehow he got the sense that it would be even less effective against Melvin. Instead, Matt just lowered his head. “Yeah, Melvin. That was me.”

“Why?”

“Because…because…” Matt didn’t owe him an explanation, did he? “I was hurt. Bad. Couldn’t do things the way I used to. Like fighting and keeping people safe. So everything else seemed…pointless.”

To say nothing of Elektra and losing her again, or of knowing that just because Foggy and Karen had waited for him in the precinct while he went to Midland Circle didn’t mean they wanted him in their lives, or of how he’d despaired of ever pleasing God and decided that the better path was just to curse Him and be done with it. To say nothing of so many things that he didn’t want to explain.

But Melvin wasn’t Karen; he didn’t seem interested in unpacking every possible reason why Matt had…tried to do that. “But you’re better now?”

Matt cracked a grin. “Yeah. I have, uh…a lot to live for.”

“Good,” Melvin said decisively.

“And…and you? You’re doing okay?”

Melvin’s shoulders hunched forward. “I hurt people.”

“The man in the suit hurt people.”

“You said people died because I helped him.”

Yeah. And if one of the people who’d died had been Foggy or Karen, Matt knew he wouldn’t be talking so calmly with Melvin. Maybe it was just luck that Matt was able to forgive Melvin at all. “Everything that was happening, everything with Fisk…it was bigger than either one of us. You’re not the only one who made mistakes.”

“People died,” Melvin repeated roughly.

“Yeah, and you can’t bring them back. But you can try not to let anything like that happen again.”

Melvin started shaking his head. “Not good enough, that’s not good enough. Fisk, he’s the one who let me out.” He paused. “You know that, right?”

“Doesn’t mean you have to follow his orders.” Matt touched the suit again. “You’re not, are you?”

“I have to wait, he told me to wait. Or he’ll hurt Betsy.”

“No,” Matt said swiftly. “Because I’m here. Last time, I couldn’t—I told you, I was hurt bad. But I’m back.” He grinned unevenly. “And this time, it’s not just me.”

“It’s not?” Melvin asked confusedly.

“Yeah. I’ve got friends. Like…” Matt moved close enough that he could put a hand on Melvin’s shoulder. “Like this guy, Stone. You’ve met him. He can help keep Betsy safe. And my friend, he’s a lawyer. A really, really good one. He can protect her legally, if he has to.”

“I don’t…” Melvin sniffed. “I don’t even know where she is.”

Matt squeezed Melvin’s shoulder. “I know. But there’s one more person I haven’t mentioned yet. She used to be a reporter, and she’s _brilliant_. If she and I work together, we can find Betsy. I promise.”

 

Micah

“Her grades are slipping,” Maeva whispered.

Micah stirred the pot of spaghetti. “How much?”

From Maeva’s disapproving snort, that was the wrong question to ask. “Not much, but it’s consistent in all her classes. Micah, we can’t keep moving her from place to place.”

Pausing, Micah listened for a moment, but Ella was talking to herself in the next room, apparently narrating some kind of story. Still, he kept his voice lowered. “She’s not upset, though. She likes her grandparents and she likes the adventure.”

Maeva rolled her eyes. “She’s seven. She thinks everything’s an adventure.”

Micah propped his utensil on a spoon rest. “I’m just trying to balance everything. Her grades aren’t too bad, and at least she’s safe.”

Maeva picked up his phone and found Matt’s number in the list of recent calls. “Is she?”

Technically, Ella hadn’t been hurt that night. But from what Matt explained—via text, and Micah tried not to be offended by that—the only reason she hadn’t was because someone else had been there, someone else who was apparently skilled and on their side. That was it: that was all Micah knew. “The point is, if this were affecting her mental health, that’d be different.”

“Isn’t it?”

He frowned. “Is it?”

“Bouncing from house to house is always—” Maeva cut herself off.

Micah wiped his hands on a towel and slowly approached his wife. Of the two of them, he wasn’t the one who’d grown up packing all his stuff into bags every weekend and every other Christmas. “Just a little longer.”

Her eyes searched his face. “How much longer?”

Micah had no idea. He’d have to ask Matt, but he hadn’t seen him since Ella was attacked at Elizabeth’s house, except for that one dinner. He could only imagine how much pressure Matt was under and wasn’t exactly excited about adding to it.

“Micah?”

“All right, all right.” Micah ran his hand over his head. “I’ll ask Matt about it.”

As if on cue, there was a knock at the back door. “Speak of the devil?” Maeva asked, looking relieved at the very thought. “Did he say he was coming over?”

Micah shook his head, but he couldn’t think of who else would show up at the back door rather than the front. Bracing himself for trouble just in case, he opened the door. There was Matt in his black mask, but the person who caught Micah’s attention was decidedly more colorful.

“What?” Micah asked stupidly.

Matt smiled awkwardly. “Micah, this is—”

“I’m Spiderman.” Spiderman (obviously; who else would dress like that?) stepped forward. “We kinda met at a gym that one time, and that was a _really_ bad first impression. I’m so sorry for the whole murderer-with-a-gun thing. Promise, that’s not normal for me.” He held out a hand.

Micah didn’t shake it. Instead, he quickly stepped outside and shut the door behind him before Ella saw and started shouting. “What’s going on here?”

“Backup,” Matt said.

Spiderman’s mask somehow managed to look affronted. He also looked…young. “I’m not backup.”

“You’re backup,” Matt repeated. “We’ve discussed this.”

Spiderman folded his arms across his chest. “I’m actually better equipped to watch over her since I have, you know, six senses to work with instead of four—”

Six?

“—so it’s more like _you’re_ backup.”

Matt turned his head resolutely in Micah’s direction. “This is Spiderman. He’s here to help. I wanted you to meet him so you don’t call the cops when you realize he’s stalking your home. For the record, Micah, what color is his stupid costume?”

“Blue,” Micah stammered. “And red. It’s pretty bright.”

From the expression on the half of Matt’s face that was visible, Micah was reasonably certain Matt was rolling his eyes. “I admit, I didn’t think it was really that bad.”

“ _Your_ stupid costume had _horns_ ,” Spiderman snapped.

Matt ignored this. “Well, Micah, I guess you don’t need the warning, since I’m getting the impression that it’ll be pretty obvious that it’s Spiderman keeping an eye on your house and not a random thug. Still, I thought I should do my due diligence and introduce you.”

A few months ago, being casually introduced to Spiderman on his own porch would’ve been a shock. Now, he found himself asking if they wanted to come in.

Spiderman shot Matt a look that Matt couldn’t see, as if asking if it was a good idea.

Matt’s mouth quirked. “Are we disrupting anything?”

Micah held the door open for them. “The better question is if Spiderman can handle Ella as well as you can.”

Spiderman’s mask looked puzzled. “Why wouldn’t I—”

At that moment, Ella must have realized that she was missing out on some kind of excitement because she dashed around the corner into a hall, only to skid to a halt. Her eyes were as round as dinner plates. “Spiderman,” she breathed.

“Hey, kid,” Spiderman said cheekily, twisting his fingers into his signature gesture.

Her eyes grew, if possible, even wider. “You’re my _favorite!_ ”

Tugging his mask off, Matt raised his eyebrows indignantly. “Since when?”

Because Ella was already assailing Spiderman with questions, Micah defended her. “Since her favorite teacher had her entire class write essays about superheroes and we didn’t allow her to write about you.”

Matt nodded, but he still looked disgruntled. “Okay, well—”

“Can they stay for dinner?” Ella begged, whirling around to gaze up at Micah.

He’d been so looking forward to having leftovers to take to work tomorrow, but Maeva would agree that dinner was the least they could offer in thanks for another pair of eyes (and five other senses, apparently) watching over Ella. “Of course they can, but you have to ask them. They might be busy.”

She turned around to look pleadingly at Spiderman. “Hi,” she said slowly and carefully. “My name’s Elizabeth, but you can call me Ella! This is my Dad and you can call him, um, Mr. Vallier, I guess.”

“Micah,” Micah corrected.

“Micah,” she echoed firmly. “Spiderman, do you want spaghetti?”

“That sounds awesome, but I can’t really eat with this.” Spiderman gestured to his mask, and Matt looked pleased.

“So take it off, silly.”

“Ella,” Micah admonished.

She shrugged stubbornly. “I won’t tell anyone. I’m _really_ good at keeping Matt’s secret.”

Spiderman’s red lenses widened dramatically. “Who’s Matt?” He pointed at Matt. “Daredevil’s _Matt?_ ”

Ella clapped both hands to her mouth.

All right, damage control. Micah scooped Ella up while the apologies tumbled out, only for Matt to burst into laughter.

“It’s okay, Ella,” he managed. “Spiderman already knows who I am.”

She melted in relief. “I’m _so_ sorry, Matt.”

“Yeah, just—just be careful, okay?” He put a hand on Spiderman’s shoulder, highlighting the height difference between them. “And don’t pressure Spiderman. It’s his choice.”

Once he’d locked the door behind them, a move that felt comfortingly redundant, Micah led Ella and the two vigilantes deeper into the dining room, noting the way that Spiderman didn’t hesitate to follow Matt into a stranger’s home. Between that and the fact that Spiderman was suspiciously smaller, Micah couldn’t help wondering if the relationship between the two was more akin to a mentor and a mentee than…colleagues.

(What world did he live in that he could use the term “colleagues” in reference to vigilantes?)

In the kitchen, Maeva took one look at Spiderman’s costume and laughed. She immediately thereafter pressed her hands to her mouth, looking startlingly like Ella.

Spiderman crossed his arms over his chest. “Tony Stark designed it.”

Ella tugged on his elbow. “Actually, your first costume was still really ugly. I think Mr. Stark made it look better, but it’s your fault it’s still red and blue.”

Of all the superheroes she could’ve written about for that paper.

“Ella,” Micah said exasperatedly. “Apologize for insulting Spiderman’s costume.”

“Not a…not a costume,” Spiderman protested under his breath.

“Micah,” Maeva chided. “Apologize for insulting Spiderman’s suit.”

While Micah and Ella attempted to out-do each other in apologies, Maeva set the table. Matt slipped behind Micah and started stealthily helping before Micah could stop him. Maybe it was Ella’s ineloquent but sincere apology or maybe it was watching Matt trying to fold himself into the domestic scene, but before Micah knew what was happening, Spiderman peeled off his mask.

Ella gasped.

Micah gasped.

Spiderman was a _kid_.

“Hi, everyone,” he said nervously as every pair of eyes in the room, excluding the obvious, landed on him. “I’m Peter.”

 

Micah and Matt were going to have _words_. But not in front of the kid. The superhero kid. The vigilante kid who was all over the news because he’d fought Captain America. Micah thought he was getting used to being in over his head, you know?

“Tell me you’re as freaked out as I am,” he muttered to Maeva as they were cleaning up after a dinner that consisted mostly of stories from Peter ( _Peter_ ).

Matt slipped by like a ghost, patted Micah on the shoulder, and informed them that Spiderman could hear them.

Frowning, Micah shooed him into the living room with Ella and Peter to keep him from helping with the dishes. But Micah kept an ear that direction, so he heard Peter make the mistake of mentioning that he was anxious about a Spanish presentation coming up, which triggered lectures from both Matt and Ella.

“You told me you didn’t have homework tonight,” Matt was hissing.

Ella sounded equally bossy. “You’re not supposed to have dessert if you haven’t done your homework!”

“I figured I’d just practice it by myself on the roof,” Peter mumbled.

“You don’t _look_ like you know Spanish,” Ella said.

Maeva and Micah both cringed. She nudged his shoulder. “Go supervise. I’ve got this.”

Marching into the other room, Micah only took a moment to recover from the unexpected sight of Peter upside-down on the ceiling before raising his eyebrows at Ella, who was sitting in Matt’s lap on the floor. “Buttercup, you can’t say stuff like that.”

She was undaunted. “He got ice cream and he hasn’t done his homework!”

Micah shrugged. “Those are family rules. He’s not my kid. You are.”

Matt dropped his chin onto the top of Ella’s head. “Lucky you,” he whispered.

Leaning against the doorway, Micah considered Peter. “You could always practice your presentation here. I won’t understand it anyway.”

“Yeah, but Matt will,” Peter grumbled.

“I will!” Ella chimed in, climbing off Matt’s lap just long enough to offer Peter a pencil and a piece of paper, though he didn’t seem to know what he was supposed to do with either of those things. “Is it about horses?”

“Um…no.”

Settling back into Matt’s lap, Ella gave a deeply disappointed sigh.

“Go ahead, Peter,” Matt said in a voice that Micah imagined very few people were capable of resisting.

Sure enough, Peter took a deep breath and started awkwardly speaking Spanish, twirling the pencil.

“ _Tendrías_ ,” Matt corrected suddenly. “Not _tenías_. The verb is irregular in the conditional tense.”

“Say that in Spanish,” Peter grumbled.

“ _El verbo está irregular in el tiempo condicional_ ,” Matt rattled off.

“ _El verbo está irregular en el tiempo condicional_ ,” Peter parroted back.

“ _Mucho mejor, pero necesitas hablar más despacio también_ ,” Matt said, and again Peter repeated it back at him.

Ella giggled. “Matt, you sound weird.”

Well, Micah was no expert, but Peter’s Spanish accent did sound better than Matt’s, although it was quite apparent that the kid didn’t actually _know_ Spanish well. But every time Matt said anything close to a full sentence, Peter echoed it back perfectly, causing Matt to look increasingly more indignant. Eventually, he started speaking faster and faster until Peter simply couldn’t keep up.

“You win,” Peter finally said begrudgingly, throwing the pencil at him.

Matt caught it, waited until Peter launched into his presentation again, and threw it back, hitting Peter in the side of the face. The kid yelped. “You’ve gotta stop relying on your spidey sense,” Matt said, in a voice that suggested this wasn’t the first time he’d had to say it.

“Sorry for not expecting a pencil attack while I’m practicing a speech.”

“I honestly can’t think of another time when you’re more likely to experience one.”

“Probably at school,” Ella said thoughtfully. “ _Everyone_ has pencils there.”

“Yeah,” Peter agreed. “And at school, I’m constantly on alert for pencil attacks.”

Matt didn’t try to combat their logic. Instead, he cocked his head towards Micah and seemed to make some sort of a decision. Murmuring something in Ella’s ear, he maneuvered himself out from under her and walked over to where Micah was standing.

“How’re you holding up?” Micah asked quietly.

“I’m…” Fine, he was about to say; Micah was sure of it. But then he tilted his head. “You mean physically, or…?”

“Well, all of it.”

“Honestly, I think I’m doing as well as can be expected, given the circumstances. Um.”

“Um?”

Turning to entirely to face Micah, Matt’s expression turned sheepish, but Micah could’ve sworn there was genuine excitement beneath it. “You remember how you asked me for advice for Ella? Since I’ve been through something like what she’s going through? I was…I was wondering if I could ask you for something similar.”

“Of course,” Micah said immediately. “What do you want to know?”

“See, I don’t really have any specific questions yet.” Matt ducked his head. “It all feels too chaotic right now. But I know I’ll have questions eventually.”

“Is this you trying to put me on retainer?”

Matt grinned. “Sort of?”

“Do I at least get to know what you’re generally asking about? You know,” Micah added lightly. “So I can start researching.”

“Uh, not yet. I’m pretty sure Karen will kill me if she’s not there to tell you.” And with that, he firmly changed the subject. “You seem calm. Given the circumstances.”

Well, Micah was a good actor. “What would be the point of panicking? If I were the only one trying to deal with this storm, maybe I would be,” he admitted. “But you’re here. Not to mention Spiderman, apparently.”

“And the trust you’re putting on me is…it means a lot. But I don’t know why you think that’s a good idea, considering…everything that’s happened.”

“Well,” Micah said dryly, “if I knew of any other vigilantes who could echolocate their way through combat, maybe I’d ask them. As it is, I seem to be stuck with you.”

“Still.” His eyes skirted away. “That’s a lot of faith you’re putting in me. I’m not sure I—”

Micah glanced into the other room. “It’s like I’m trying to show Ella. Trust is serious. It means relying on someone to the point that their mistakes and failures actually affect you.”

“But we’re not just talking about you,” Matt cut in. “You’re trusting me with Ella. And your wife.”

Micah nodded slowly. “But I have good reason to trust you.”

Matt’s face darkened. “I almost let her get killed from devil’s hell.”

“And if it’d just been me, she would’ve actually been killed,” Micah retorted.

“So, what.” Matt’s mouth twisted. “Trust is just…the lesser of two evils?”

Micah squinted at him, but Matt’s eyes were bitter and doubtful, as if he actually believed it. Micah searched for words to argue, to explain that trust in someone worthy of it was a relief, not a…concession. “No,” Micah said simply.

“What, then?” His voice was a challenge but his body seemed smaller than normal. Wary.

“Matt, trust is a choice.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was the most simultaneously fun and annoying chapter I've written recently. There are just so many characters and I want them all to have so many conversations, but also plot is a thing.


	12. Give Me Peace for the Moment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Help Me Find It" by Sidewalk Prophets (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsjZ94K7UQs).

Melvin

Everything was coming together nicely. It was good that he had this project to work on, since Mr. Fisk hadn’t had much for Melvin to do. Melvin was starting to wonder why he’d been let out of prison at all.

Then his phone rang. Not his phone, really. The phone Mr. Fisk gave him. Melvin was supposed to answer it every time it rang. He didn’t know what would happen if he didn’t.

“Hello?”

It was _Betsy’s_ voice on the other end. It sounded like she was crying when she said his name.

“Betsy?” He squeezed the phone. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine, I’m…” She sniffled. “Someone told DOCCS. About us.”

His brain spun. “About our relationship?”

“ _Yes_.” She sniffed again. “But that’s not all of it. I could deal with that, I could try to explain, but, um, I—I’m actually under arrest right now. Where are you?”

Arrest? But she was _innocent_. She was _good_. “Betsy,” he said helplessly.

“Just a second.” Muffled sounds came through the phone.

Then a new voice with a slight Spanish accent. “Mr. Potter? My name is Mr. Lopez. We’ve spoken before.”

The lawyer Fisk assigned him. “You got me released,” Melvin said stupidly.

“Correct. I’ve also taken Betsy’s case on behalf of your employer. I can’t guarantee that everything is going to go back to normal, but I’ll do my uttermost. She’s been charged with aiding and abetting your criminal activities. As I’m intimately aware of those activities, I should be able to navigate Betsy’s charges without a problem.”

“She didn’t,” Melvin argued. “She didn’t do anything like that.”

“Of course not.” Lopez’s voice hardened. “But that’s not what the informant told the NYPD. The good news is, it doesn’t seem to be personal. Maybe he just wanted a new client.”

“Who?” Melvin demanded. “Who’s the informant?”

Lopez hummed—a verbal shrug. “That lawyer. Defense lawyer. Matthew Murdock? You know him?”

No. No, Melvin had no idea who Lopez was talking about. But he was gonna find out.

 

Stone

“He didn’t leave Gao’s body for three hours,” Stone murmured, eyes on Dex. They were at a park—empty on a weekday morning—and Dex had been jogging in circles around the perimeter for the last fifteen minutes, showing no signs of slowing down.

Matty leaned on his cane. “She was his north star.”

“When he ran away from your apartment, he could’ve gone anywhere. But he went to her.” Stone let the rest of his senses compensate as Dex’s route took him behind them, outside Stone’s field of vision. “How long are we going to keep treating him like the enemy?”

Matty’s eyebrows shot up behind his glasses. “Come again?”

“Or like a bomb that’s about to explode.”

“He _is_ a bomb that’s about to explode.”

Stone briefly pressed his lips together. “This isn’t sustainable and you know it. He’s searching, Matty. He’s desperate.” And Stone came to Hell’s Kitchen to try to fix Matty, fix the student Stick left behind…only to discover that Matty didn’t need to be fixed after all. But Dex clearly did.

Matty picked up on what Stone was leaving unsaid. “That’s my _point_. He’s desperate, and you and I?” He gestured sharply between them. “You and I aren’t qualified.”

“We’re the only ones who’ll bother to try.”

Matty dropped the hand not holding his cane to his hip. “All right, let’s play this out. Say we try to help him, we take him under our wings, so to speak. Fine. But are you prepared for what’ll happen if we fail? And I’m not just talking about the collateral damage we can expect if his wires cross while he’s got a gun in his hands.”

“I’m not planning on giving him a gun.”

Matty rolled his eyes. “Say he’s got a pair of scissors then, or even a _snow globe_. Lives could be lost.”

“ _Could_ be.”

“As I said, I’m not just talking about that.” Matty’s expression darkened. “I’m talking about what it’ll mean for Dex to get his hopes up, to think we’re his saviors, only to be let down. What do you think that’ll do to him?”

Dex was back in Stone’s field of vision, picking up the pace as he ran. “Better than rotting in a cell.”

“Is it?”

Stone ran his tongue along the back of his teeth and said nothing.

“And what about us, Stone? Have you thought about that?”

Stone cocked his head.

“Have you thought about what it’ll mean for us to—to try to help him right himself, but then…” Matty shoved his free hand into his pocket and shut his mouth.

Stone was about to argue, then reconsidered. The truth was, he had very little idea what Matty was talking about. The closest thing Stone could think of was how he’d tried to steer Gio away from his worthless friends. But to his everlasting shame, he hadn’t tried very hard.

Still, surely the feeling of trying harder and failing would be better than living with the knowledge that he’d hardly tried at all.

“Look,” Matty said quietly. “I know what it’s like, wanting to help someone like that—”

“You know what it’s like to stop someone from being attacked on the streets,” Stone corrected.

Several emotions crossed his face in such rapid succession that Stone couldn’t discern them. “Does Dex even want to change? _Really_ want to?”

From their conversation in the tunnels, it sounded like it. “I believe so, yes, but even if he doesn’t—”

His sightless eyes flashed. “Because Elektra wanted to and that didn’t change a damn thing.”

In the time they’d known each other, Matty had never, not once, brought up Elektra on his own. Given the fact that she was one of the few things they had in common, that seemed significant. But it wasn’t a fair comparison. Elektra was the Black Sky and she was manipulated by the Hand. Besides… “Seems to me like it changed plenty. Didn’t she die for you?”

For a second, Stone thought Matty might punch him.

Stone lowered his voice and spoke quickly. “You didn’t want me to kill him, which means you think his life’s worth something. I’m just trying to build on that.”

A muscle twitched in Matty’s jaw. “Someone’s going to get hurt.”

“If you help me, maybe not.” Stone waited expectantly. He couldn’t imagine Matty would be able to resist his own inclinations towards helping people—anyone—for very long.

Finally, Matty hung his head, but Stone could see a reluctant smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “ _Fine_. We’ll try.” He glanced back up. “But I’m reserving the right to turn Dex in to the NYPD if I feel like something’s going wrong.”

“Done,” Stone said calmly.

 

Stone wasn’t quite sure how they ended up at Fogwell’s Gym a few hours later, but he wasn’t complaining. The place looked almost as grimy as it smelled, but three punching bags hung from the ceiling in a row. As soon as Matty unlocked the door, Dex nudged past him into the space by the ring, looking confused and excited and also as though he was trying to hide both of those emotions.

He had a terrible poker face.

“What’re we doing here?” Dex asked, watching Matty drop his gym bag on the bench.

“Punching things,” Matty said simply, unzipping the bag while Stone closed and locked the door behind them. “Helps me relax. Think. Might do the same for you.”

Dex drifted closer. “Helps you think?”

“Basically.” Matt wrapped up his wrists and cocked his head. “You want wraps?”

Dex shook out his hands. “I don’t need ’em.”

“If your form’s wrong, you’ll just do more harm than good over the long term.” Matty pulled out spare wraps. “Let me see.”

Dex stepped back jerkily.

Matty smirked. “Fine, break your wrist. I don’t care.” He walked over to the second bag, a whiteish one that was lumpy from overuse, and tapped it. “Knock yourself out.”

Dex only hesitated for a moment before squaring up in front of the bag.

“See,” Stone whispered from where he was leaning against the corner of the ring, too low for Dex to hear.

“This isn’t exactly therapy,” Matty muttered back. “And I would know.”

“It’s bonding,” Stone corrected. “An integral first step towards developing a relationship based on mutual trust.”

Matty shot Stone a look, clearly indicating that he didn’t plan on trusting Dex any time soon. Considering what Dex tried to do to so many of the people in Matty’s life, Stone couldn’t begrudge him that. Nevertheless, the situation presented a new angle on Stick’s well-worn warnings about attachments. Apparently it was easier to bear the risks of helping others when you weren’t worried about people of your own.

Stick would be _thrilled_ with this interpretation of his teaching.

When Stone said nothing more, Matty stepped up to his own bag and slipped into a stance that was just slightly too wide to be anything he’d learned from Stick. A boxer’s stance. Picked up from his father, no doubt. Stone had done his research on Jack Murdock, enough to want to know more. But that wasn’t a conversation he planned on initiating any time soon.

Drawing a knife from his belt to play with, Stone observed both Dex and Matty. Where Dex pummeled his bag desperately, as though each hit might be his last opportunity, Matty _danced_. He followed the bag as it swung to and fro, ducking imaginary retaliatory strikes as he went, landing each punch with sharp precision. It looked like choreographed lightning.

Stone lost track of time until Matty suddenly bounced backwards, wiping sweat off his forehead. “Stone, you want a shot?”

Perhaps if Dex weren’t there, but Dex would immediately recognize Stone’s utter inexperience with punching bags. Stone focused on his knife. “No.” But his heartbeat stuttered slightly, and he knew it. Matty raised his eyebrows pointedly. “I got plenty of training without bothering with fake bags,” Stone growled.

To his relief, Matty didn’t push him.

Behind him, Dex was growing increasingly agitated; his furious grunts were almost pained. Stone watched curiously as Matty glided over to his gym bag and retrieved a pair of headphones and a small black device. Returning to Dex, Matty stood a safe distance behind him. “Hey.”

Dex whirled around, fists raised.

Matty stepped swiftly to the side so Dex’s fist flashed past Matty’s face. “Hey,” he repeated firmly. “It’s better when you listen to something.”

Dex’s eyes dropped down to the old tape in his hand. “That’s not yours.”

“You want it back?”

Dex glared indecisively for a moment. Then he snatched the tape and headphones.

Matty rolled his eyes in Stone’s direction as if to remind Stone that he didn’t think this would work before returning to his bag, but he seemed distracted. Perhaps because he could definitely hear what Dex was listening to through the headphones even better than Stone could.

Before he could second-guess himself, Stone pushed himself off the ring and drew closer. “You want a hand?”

Matt shook his hair out of his face. “What?”

“I can hold the bag for you.”

Matty’s eyes brightened. “Uh. Thanks.”

“Do you still think this is a bad idea?” Stone murmured.

“Jury’s out.”

Stone felt the strength of Matty’s punches through the bag. “Well, I appreciate you taking the chance, then.”

Matty’s eyes flicked up towards Stone’s face, unnervingly sincere. Then, without warning, he grabbed the bag to hold it still. “Trade?” he suggested between gasps for breath.

Well, Dex was distracted, so…why not? Without giving himself the chance to overthink it, Stone nodded. If Matty was going to start coaching, though, Stone was going to walk away.

It was strange, hitting a thing that was couldn’t hit back and couldn’t move except in wide, swinging arcs. Stone didn’t particularly like it. He’d rather hit something that reacted, not something that so casually absorbed his strikes. But the exertion burned through his muscles in a new way that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. He blinked the sweat out of his eyes. “You gonna teach your kid how to do this?”

Matty looked surprised, but he immediately started grinning. “Yeah. If she wants to.”

Stone’s feet stuttered and his next punch landed awkwardly. “ _She?_ ”

“Watch your footwork.”

Stone hit the bag harder, jolting Matty where he was gripping the bag. “Can you tell?”

Matty shook his head. “I have a feeling. It’s too early for the ultrasound, and there’s too much…stuff…for me to get a clear sense of, you know, what’s going on in there.”

“Well, that’s probably for the best,” Stone said dryly.

Matty shoved the bag, hitting Stone squarely in the chest with a dull _thud_. “It’s just weird how I know basically nothing about this kid, definitely not compared to what I know about literally anyone else, but I…”

Noting the way Matty’s eyes were softening, Stone casually slowed his barrage of strikes. “You what?”

“I love my kid, Stone,” he admitted, fingers tapping rapidly against the bag. “I love my kid so much for _no reason_.”

That seemed like the perfect kind of love.

 

Peter

“Hey, Karen?” Peter asked, lying on his back on the Valliers’ roof. The family beneath him was asleep.

“Yes?” the mechanical voice responded.

“D’you think I should ask Michelle out?”

“Do you want to ask her out, Peter?”

Why did he think getting advice from a droid was a good idea? Especially one designed by Tony Stark. “I mean, d’you think she likes me?”

“I couldn’t say, Peter. I don’t know enough about her.”

Peter frowned. “What, am I supposed to…wear the suit around her so you can collect data?”

“Something like that,” Karen said mildly.

“But wouldn’t wearing the suit throw off how she acts? It’s like adding a new variable.”

“I would do my best to account for that.”

Peter sighed. “Never mind.” A few minutes later: “Karen?”

“Yes, Peter?”

“D’you think Ned feels left out now that I’m Spiderman?”

“Do you think he feels left out?”

All right, she wasn’t cut out for this. “Never mind. Thanks.” He stared up at the stars, zooming in on them one at a time just to see how much detail he could pick up. They crystalized in his lenses, shining brighter. Some clustered together. Others were alone in a sea of black.

Ned wanted to start a club for superheroes and friends. Peter cringed internally. That sounded dumb. But he didn’t think the idea was a bad one. He saw how much more relaxed Matt was with the Valliers. Apparently that was an okay line to cross sometimes, and it seemed good for Matt. It was cool hanging out with Mr. Stark, but that was a rare thing. In between internship stuff, Peter was basically on his own to figure out how to be a friendly neighborhood Spiderman. Until he met Matt. But Ned was still on his own to figure out how to be best friends with a friendly neighborhood Spiderman.

Peter knew how important Matt’s secret identity. Seriously, he was _highly_ aware. And he felt kind of awful for springing this on him now after Peter agreed to spend his nights on the Valliers’ roof, now that he was doing Matt a favor. But Matt was an adult; he knew how to say no. Probably.

“Karen,” Peter said. “Call Matt.”

“Calling Matt,” she agreed happily.

 

Foggy

“This is nice,” Foggy announced. He, Matt, and Karen were holed up in Stone’s apartment. Which Foggy would not have assumed was Stone’s apartment had Matt not told him. Apparently, Matt spruced it up a bit. For a blind guy, he had good taste. And even though Karen was sitting comfortably in pajamas, he and Matt were both wearing suits since they’d had to appear briefly at court this morning. And no one even got injured. It was enough of an accomplishment to make Foggy relax a little. Things felt almost…normal.

“Stone’s watching over Dex and Melvin and Peter’s watching over the Valliers,” Matt recited. “Everyone should be safe.”

Foggy noted that he didn’t mention the fact that he was watching over Foggy and Karen. Probably for the best, since Karen wasn’t a huge fan of being…watched over.

“Speaking of Melvin,” Karen said from where she was perched on the bed behind her laptop with a bowl of ice cream and mangoes close at hand. Apparently her life now depended on an abundance of both of those things. “I found Betsy.”

Matt pulled out his earbuds. “What? How?”

“Well, I found her parents’ house.”

“And you’re sure she’s at her parents’ house because…?”

Foggy started groaning before Karen could even say it. “I, um, went there,” she admitted. “Told her Melvin got out.”

“When?” Matt asked tersely. “When did this happen?”

“Um, back when Stone went to go look after Ella.”

Meaning she went by herself. “And look at that,” Foggy said loudly. “Karen’s still alive. Matt, stop clenching your jaw. My teeth hurt just looking at you.”

Matt glared somewhere around Foggy’s ear.

Karen cleared her throat to regain their attention. “Point is, I think Betsy trusts me. She recognized me from my articles and the news coverage of the…the grand jury indictment that didn’t work.” Her voice got quieter for a moment. Remembering Ray? “Anyway, so I convinced her to stay put and gave her my number in case she needs help.”

Matt blinked at her. “You…gave _Betsy_ …your number.”

“Yeah,” Karen said defensively. “In case something goes wrong. Just because Fisk orchestrated Melvin’s release doesn’t mean she’s not in danger. In fact, I think she’s probably in _more_ danger.”

“Yeah, but…” Matt rubbed the back of his hand against his mouth in frustration. “Say she does call. What then? Are we supposed to tell Stone to leave Dex alone so he can go save the day?”

“I was thinking I’d send you, actually.”

Matt looked…overwhelmed was the right word, probably. “Karen, we can’t…I mean, you’re brilliant for finding her, and…and I _love_ that you wanna keep her safe, but…” His eyebrows pinched together. “Please don’t ask me to prioritize her.”

Foggy nudged his shoulder. “It’s all right. If Betsy needs help, I’ll take my baseball bat.”

Neither of them laughed, which Foggy firmly decided meant that they were taking his offer of help very seriously. But then the silence stretched out, like Matt and Karen were measuring each other. It was times like these that Foggy couldn’t help but appreciate how stupidly heroic they both were. Trying to save the day, one person at a time, the occasional disagreement on which person to save notwithstanding.

The silence was interrupted by a sharp buzzing. Foggy might have jumped a little. Holding his burner phone to his ear, Matt excused himself from the table. “Peter? Something wrong?”

“C’mon, Karen,” Foggy whispered. “You’ve seen my baseball bat at work.”

She made a face. “We don’t need a repeat of that.”

“Agree to disagree.” Foggy glanced up at Matt, who stood frozen with his mouth half-open, looking confused. “How much you wanna bet Peter’s asking him for awkward life advice right now?”

Karen raised her eyebrows. “Is that a thing Peter does?”

Foggy suddenly realized that Karen had yet to meet Peter. That interaction was going to be _priceless_.

“You realize what you’re asking me,” Matt was saying into the phone, one hand on his hip. “It’s not just my life at stake here, it’s—I know you know, but—I know you trust him, but that doesn’t mean I—huh.” He grimaced, which Foggy suspected meant that he was losing the argument. “Just—just—can I get back to you on this?” A pause. “Right, how’s Ella?” he asked, almost weakly.

Ah. Because Matt owed Peter a favor and if Foggy didn’t know better, he’d say Peter was cashing in on it. Genius.

Matt hung up and flopped back into his chair.

“Girl problems?” Karen asked lightly.

“Worse. Best friend problems. Peter wants his friend Ned to meet us.” Matt tilted his head, almost like he was trying to look askance at Foggy. “Mostly, he wants him to meet you.”

“Of course he does,” Foggy said loftily. He frowned. “But why, exactly?”

“Because you’re fluent in broody vigilante,” Karen explained.

Matt looked like he was about to protest that he didn’t brood, then seemed to rethink it.

“It didn’t sound like you said no,” Foggy said carefully, watching him closely. “Even though we’re talking about a high school kid who may not even stay friends with Peter. Believe me, high schoolers are vicious.”

Karen was unimpressed. “We all went to high school, Foggy.”

“I don’t think we have to worry about Ned not staying loyal to Peter. Their friendship seems solid,” Matt said slowly. He touched Foggy’s arm. “Kind of like us.”

That did not do warm things to Foggy’s stomach. It _didn’t_. “Well, I’m down with it.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” Matt mumbled. “Everyone’s pushing me to do altruistic things today.”

Right. Matt told them about Stone’s guilt trip, which Foggy found simultaneously confusing and impressive. “I’m not pushing, buddy. If you don’t think we should help Ned, that’s your call.”

Matt huffed at Foggy’s very intentional decision to frame the issue around _helping Ned_ rather than _protecting secret identities_.

“Karen,” Foggy said smoothly, figuring it was best to leave Matt to convince himself, “have you got the McCulloch files?”

She rifled through a stack of folders. “Um. No.”

Foggy had a sudden memory of reading through those files with a particularly expensive alcoholic beverage last night. He facepalmed. “I think I left them at home.” And the deadline to file was tonight.

Matt reached for his bag. “I’ll get them.”

“Uh, no. I’m allowed to break into your house, Matt. Not the other way around.”

Matt looked indignant. “That seems fair to you?”

“I have Marci to keep me out of trouble,” Foggy explained smoothly. “You have Karen, who basically doesn’t count.”

Karen scowled, but didn’t argue.

“Karen, order us a pizza for when we get back?”

“We?” Matt echoed. “Also, what part of lying low don’t you understand?”

“Oh, like the pizza guy’s gonna rat us out to Fisk,” Foggy said. “And yes, _we_ , because I wanna bounce some ideas off you before we file. You’re coming with me.”

 

The files were poking out from under the couch. While Foggy crouched down to retrieve them, Matt wandered around the apartment. Sniffing things, it looked like. Foggy appreciated the security sweep, but he also wondered when was the last time he or Marci had cleaned the place.

“Sorry,” he blurted out.

Matt paused. “For?”

“If it smells like a toxic waste dump in here.” Marci liked things organized and most of the surfaces were wiped down, but that probably meant squat for someone with Matt’s nose.

Matt laughed. “I mean, it smells like you.”

“I find that outrageously insulting.” Foggy groaned as he got back to his feet. He should start working out with Matt or something, just to increase his flexibility. “Hey—get out of the fridge.”

“Can I take these?” Matt closed the fridge, but he was holding a bag of mixed berries. “Karen’s been craving raspberries.”

“Marci was gonna make a smoothie with those.” But it was Karen and Foggy knew better than to get between her and a craving. “Speaking of Marci.” He stole a blueberry from the bag. “She’s wondering if we should cancel our venue reservations. And our food reservations. And…and all of it, really.”

Matt bit his lip. “Because of Fisk.”

“Is she right?”

“She’s being smart,” Matt hedged.

“Yeah, she’s like that. But is she _right?_ ”

Matt ran a hand through his hair, tousling it. “I don’t know. If Fisk really is focused on Karen, you’re probably a secondary concern. Or tertiary.” He winced. “Not that you’re not—it’s just—Fisk knows you’re important to her, but—”

Foggy took pity on him. “I get it. And believe me, I’m not complaining about being third on Fisk’s hit list. But Marci’s thinking the wedding would be the perfect place for Fisk to do whatever he has planned, since we’d all be there and you’d be…dressed own.”

“Would I? I was thinking it’d make more of a statement if I wore the mask.”

“Only if it matches my tux,” Foggy said lightly. “We still need to get you fitted for yours, by the way, although I’m thinking—” He stopped, catching the familiar tilt of Matt’s head. “What is it?”

Matt’s forehead creased, lips parted in concentration. “There’s a police officer coming up the stairs.”

“Well, Mrs. DiPaolo next door keeps trying to call the police on the MacDowell kids across the hall. I think the NYPD’s getting sick of it.”

“This guy doesn’t sound annoyed. He sounds nervous.”

Foggy’s own heart started to beat faster. He wished it wouldn’t, but they were in Fisk’s crosshairs now, and paranoia seemed rational.

He still jumped when the knock sounded at the door. “NYPD, please open the door.”

Foggy stared at Matt. “What do we do?” he whispered.

Matt set the bag of berries silently on the counter. “His gun’s holstered. Answer it.” He offered a smile that Foggy saw straight through. “I’ve got your back, Fogs.”

Swearing under his breath, Foggy undid the chain, unlocked the door, and came face to face with a youngish officer staring at him with serious brown eyes. “Good evening, Mr. Nelson. Officer Robinson.” His eyes slid past Foggy. “You’re a hard man to find, Mr. Murdock.”

“Me?” Matt stepped uncertainly out of the kitchen, looking perfectly blind. His cane was in the corner by the door. Foggy moved to hand it to him.

“Stay where you are,” Robinson barked.

“He’s blind,” Foggy said testily. “I’m just giving him his—”

“Mr. Murdock, I need you to come with me.”

Matt looked bewildered and Foggy could tell that it wasn’t entirely an act. “Officer, I don’t—”

“Is Matt being charged with something?” Foggy interrupted.

Robinson shifted his weight in the doorway. “No charges yet but you can expect any of the charges associated with vigilantism.”

“Wait, _what?_ ” Foggy squawked.

Robinson held up his hands. “Look, I’m just doing my job. But I saw the video myself and it’s freaky.”

Foggy’s stomach flipped as Matt’s face drained of color. “What video?”

“From that prison. I’m not gonna pretend I understand it, but…” He pulled out his handcuffs. “It means I’ve gotta use these.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everything's gonna be FINE. As always, dear readers, your comments are lifegiving.


	13. My Head's High But I'm Wearing a Blindfold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Breath Before the Plunge" by Attalus (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QDynGN2wOQ).

Foggy

Foggy stepped swiftly forward before Officer Robinson could apply the cuffs. “Hang on! There’s no way whatever video you’re talking about could’ve been authenticated.” The dirty guards at the prison had scrambled to get rid of any incriminating evidence—which was the only reason this problem hadn’t come up before. Besides, even honest cops were allowed to lie when interrogating a suspect.

The officer shot Foggy an apologetic glance. “I guess that’s your problem, isn’t it, Mr. Nelson?” He turned to Matt, holding out the handcuffs. “Now, Mr. Murdock—”

To Foggy’s undying relief, Matt didn’t play along. He took a step backwards with his arms across his chest. “Excuse me, Officer. Am I being arrested or am I being detained?”

The officer looked uncomfortable at being forced to pin himself down. “Detained. For now.”

Matt coolly raised his eyebrows. “Handcuffs alone may not be sufficient to indicate an arrest rather than a detainment, but they’re strong evidence.”

“Public safety concerns, Mr. Murdock,” Robinson said awkwardly. “You know the drill.”

“Public safety?” Matt looked smugly amused. “Officer, I’m blind. Surely—”

“You’re also suspected of being Daredevil.” Robinson winced visibly. “I know that sounds stupid. Not—not that I don’t think a blind person could be Daredevil, I just…” He swore quietly under his breath. “Just let me cuff you so we can get this over with.”

Foggy narrowed his eyes. “You can’t possibly be that worried about public safety or you would’ve called for backup. Or the department wouldn’t have sent you alone.”

“Save it for your brief, Counselor,” Robinson snapped. “Mr. Murdock, I just need to make sure you’re controlled so I can ask you a couple of questions.”

Matt didn’t budge. “You realize Daredevil has escaped handcuffs before, right? Honestly, I’m having a hard time believing the NYPD would’ve sent a lone officer to detain someone they thought was Daredevil. I’d like to speak with your supervising officer. Or DA Tower, actually, if he—”

“You wanna add resisting arrest to your charges?”

Technically, just stepping away and folding his arms could be construed as resisting arrest. But after last time when Matt just _pled guilty to manslaughter_ , Foggy couldn’t help feeling relieved that for once his best friend wasn’t leaping at the chance to martyr himself. Still. “Matt,” he said quietly. “I’ve got your back.”

Matt’s lip curled, but at Foggy’s words he held out his wrists. “For the record,” he said, “I do not consent to any searches and I’m enthusiastically invoking my right to remain silent.”

Yeah, that’d be the day.

Matt cocked his head in Foggy’s direction. “And I want a lawyer.”

 

Matt was slumped at a table, glasses off, though at least he didn’t look as despairing as he had the last time he’d been accused of a crime, and, out of all the defense attorneys in this city, Foggy was uniquely qualified to take care of him right now. They were gonna be fine.

He tried to project an air of confidence as he stood across the table from his best friend. “Okay. Okay. What video are they talking about?”

“The, uh…from Rykers. When I broke in. Using your ID,” he added guiltily.

They were _so_ far beyond that at this point. “You said you fought your way out…?”

“I’m guessing that’s what the video shows.” Matt dropped his head into his hands. “I was gonna get Karen raspberries,” he mumbled. Then he looked up, eyes wide. “Karen.”

Foggy was already swiping through his phone; didn’t want to make Matt deal with a touchscreen without any accessibility features. Once he heard the ringing, he handed it to Matt.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Matt said a second later in a tone so soft that Foggy felt like he should leave Matt alone with the phone or something. “Are you all right? Did the, uh…did the pizza ever get there?”

Idiot.

“Well, you can save it for yourself,” Matt went on. “I’m kind of tied up at the NYPD with Foggy right now. Don’t panic, it’s fine. They just—no, I’m fine. It’s not—” He sighed, then held out the phone. “She wants to talk to you.”

No surprise there. “Hey, Karen.”

“He’s _fine?_ ” she demanded, voice staticky and panicky.

Stupid rhyme. Get a grip, Nelson. “He’s just been, um, detained. Technically. The police got their hands on the video of him fighting his way out of Rykers and now they…” Foggy took a deep breath and let it out in a rush: “Now they think he’s Daredevil. I guess.”

“He’s _blind_.”

“Wow, good point, I’ll go tell them right away, I bet they have no idea.” Matt looked annoyed, so Foggy backed off the insults, running a hand through his hair. “We live in a world with Jessica Jones and Captain America. Plausible deniability only goes so far.”

“Just because he can fight in a hallway doesn’t mean he’s a superhero,” Karen snapped.

“Maybe hold off on that assessment until we’ve actually _seen_ the video,” Foggy snapped back. The door opened. “Oh, hey, it’s Brett. Gotta go.”

“Foggy—”

He hung up, knowing full well he’d pay for that later.

Magically wearing his glasses again, Matt aimed a sharklike smile at Brett. “Guess you were right. This isn’t a good time.”

Brett was nervously tapping his foot. “Look. I’m sorry about this, I really am, but I didn’t see how my fighting the decision would do any good. I’ve still had more interactions with Daredevil than anyone else on the force, so I’m hoping that if I keep my head down, I could get called as a witness again.” He lifted his chin towards Matt. “See if I can do a better job this time.”

Foggy blinked at him. “Wow, Brett, that’s…”

“Thank you,” Matt said, less harsh now. “Is there anything else you can tell us?”

“Just that this doesn’t add up. Tower went out of his way to send more officers at night, hoping to catch Daredevil in the act. Not that there’ve been as many Daredevil sightings recently.”

“Things have been busy,” Matt whispered.

“No kidding. Thing that really made me nervous, though, was when Tower had all of us review the transcript of your last trial. Last I heard, he was bugging Judge Lauria about getting a warrant to search Matt Murdock’s apartment.”

Foggy gaped at him. “On what grounds?”

Brett glared. Not at Matt or Foggy, really, just around the room in general. “Fisk tipped him off, and most of Fisk’s tips were reliable—”

“Because he was building himself a little criminal network and taking out the competition,” Foggy spat.

Leaning back in his chair, Matt crossed his arms over his chest. “Fisk lied about me before, so whatever credibility he used to have as an informant is negligible, at least with regards to me. He has every motive to lie about me. And Foggy,” he added sharply. “And Karen.”

“You don’t need to convince me of that,” Brett said flatly. “And all of this just makes me think it doesn’t stop there.” He lowered his voice. “Wouldn’t be the first time Fisk got leverage on a public official.”

Foggy swore quietly.

But Matt seemed as undaunted as always, eyes narrowing. “And the video. It was taken months ago, so why’s it just now being released? Fisk has had all the time he needs to doctor it. What can you tell us about its authentication? Where it’s been kept, who’s been its custodian?”

“You’ll get all that with the Brady materials,” Brett said. “I’m not even supposed to be talking to you guys. I just wanted to see if I could do anything for you.”

“Get us that footage asap,” Foggy said immediately.

“I’ll see what I can do.” He turned towards the door, then hesitated, glancing back. “Hey…Murdock?”

Matt looked wary. “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry,” Brett said simply. Then he was gone.

The second the door clicked shut, Foggy turned on Matt. “Be straight with me for a second. How bad is it? The video?”

Matt tugged his glasses off, rubbing over his ears like he couldn’t stand the pressure. Maybe he couldn’t. “Not like I ever saw it.”

“ _Matt_.”

He threw his hands up. “I don’t know! Bad. Does it matter? If Fisk really told Tower I’m Daredevil, the evidence won’t stop with just the surveillance footage. They’ll pull up all the YouTube videos, and look into Midland Circle, and poke through all our cases.” He closed his eyes with a low moan. “Fogs, our _cases_.”

Of course he would go there, of course he’d be more worried about the legitimacy of their cases. Foggy bit back his frustration. Frustration would not help. “Our cases are not the priority,” he said gently. “You are.”

“I’m sick of being the priority.”

Foggy didn’t think it was worth pointing out how Karen had been the priority until literally today, and there were about a thousand other people—Ella, Foggy himself, even freaking Spiderman—who’d been the priority at any given time. Instead, Foggy sat down across from him, mustering his arguments. “We gotta take the plea,” he said, so quietly he could barely hear himself. “We don’t want this going to trial.”

Matt tipped his head to the side. “We don’t?”

Was he insane? “ _No_ , Matt. We don’t. We don’t wanna leave your fate up to a jury that can’t tell the difference between you and people like Castle or Poindexter—”

“They can tell,” Matt said immediately.

“What?”

“They can tell. They know I’m not the Punisher and they know the fake Daredevil was never me. I think…” Something shifted in his eyes, something resolved and confident and maybe a little bit proud. “I think a jury would be on my side.”

Right. Because it was _his_ city, and the jury would be made up of the people he’d devoted his life to protect. Well, no one wanted to believe him more than Foggy and Foggy totally understood why he might be, you know, romanticizing things a bit, but…no. Because all it took was one jury member who’d had a bad run-in with the Punisher or who hated vigilantes in general or even someone with a cousin or something that Daredevil _failed_ to save…no. Foggy spoke clearly: “No. Jury. Trial.”

Matt squared his jaw and said nothing.

Fine. Time for some sophisticated negotiating. “If you insist on going to trial, you’ve gotta give me something to work with here, buddy.”

“Such as?” Matt asked carelessly.

“Such as use immunity in exchange for testifying against someone else. Specifically, I’m thinking Dex.”

Matt stiffened.

“He escaped custody, he’s guilty of far more violent crimes than you, and you know exactly how the police can find him.” Foggy thought he sounded pretty reasonable, but his friend’s rigid posture was a predictably bad sign. “Get him the punishment he deserves and prove to everyone watching that our justice system can handle people like him.”

“No,” Matt said softly.

Foggy pretended to be surprised. “ _No?_ ”

“I’m not selling someone else out just to cover my own mistakes.”

See, Foggy expected that general sentiment. Still, this was ridiculous. “It’s not _selling him out_. Unstable psycho murderer, remember?”

Matt’s expression took on the kind of earnestness Foggy remembered from when he’d insisted that they defend Frank Castle, or even Karen, or any of the clients that Foggy hadn’t wanted to deal with. “Stone thinks Dex is trying to be better.”

“Okay, so he’s downgraded to just a murderer and not an unstable psycho one?”

“Fine.” Matt kicked moodily at the leg of the table.

“Fine, what?”

“Fine, I’ll take the stupid plea. Just leave Dex out of this.” He grimaced. “Unless the plea deal is _really_ terrible.”

“But we’ll make that decision together, right? _Right?_ ” Matt didn’t answer. Foggy leaned across the table. “Matt. Work with me, buddy.”

Matt chewed on his lip. “I just…” And stopped.

Foggy narrowed his eyes. “Just what?”

“I _want_ to work with you, Foggy.” He blinked twice. “And I know you want to hear me say it. But I can’t promise that.”

“Because…?”

His eyes skirted away from Foggy, flicking around the corner of the room. “Because when have I ever been easy to work with?”

“I’m not asking you to go along with whatever I say. I’m just asking you to not push me away entirely.  You can promise me that much.”

“You think?” Matt asked flatly.

Impulsively, Foggy put his arm on the table, grabbing Matt’s hand and pressing his fingers to the pulse of Foggy’s wrist. “Yes,” he said clearly. “I fully, one hundred percent believe that you are capable not only of making that promise but of keeping it. Wanna know why?”

“Because you made me sign the stupid Bad Decision Spectrum?”

“No. Because aside from the blip with Fisk, you’ve actually been pretty consistent at not trying to solve all your problems on your own.” Matt didn’t look like he believed that at all, but Foggy just squeezed his hand. “I don’t think I’ve told you how much I appreciate that. But seriously. Thank you.”

Matt’s fingers pressed a little harder against Foggy’s pulse.

 

Melvin

Matt Murdock was blind. That was easy to figure out. There were the news stories of when he was a kid, there were pictures of him from law school and more recent pictures from news stories about how Murdock was working for Fisk. But the police didn’t confirm any of those stories, so Melvin had a hard time believing them. Plus, it didn’t make sense that Murdock would work for Fisk and then start telling people about Betsy when Fisk _knew_ Betsy was the only reason Melvin would help Fisk at all. Seemed more likely that Murdock was an enemy of Fisk, so Fisk sold him out. Fisk liked to use the media to do that kind of thing.

You’d think the media would’ve figured that out by now. But apparently not, because some channels were still talking about James Wesley. The stories should’ve died down, but then some reporter unearthed a huge donation Wesley made to a bunch of the schools. Melvin didn’t believe it was Wesley’s idea. Somehow, Fisk had to be behind this too.

But Melvin didn’t bother trying to figure out how or why. He had bigger problems, and besides, thinking about James Wesley slinking around in his suit and glasses made Melvin shiver. Hearing his voice in news snippets made it seem like Wesley wasn’t even dead.

Anyway. Matt Murdock was blind. Melvin didn’t feel great about going after the blind guy even if the blind guy was the one who exposed his relationship with Betsy. It was enough to slow him down, cool the fury a little bit. Without the fury, though, he wasn’t sure what to do.

He called Lopez. He hated talking to Lopez, but he needed to talk to Betsy.

“You can’t talk to Betsy,” Lopez said.

Melvin’s stomach flipped. “What happened?”

Lopez heaved a sigh like he actually felt bad about the situation. “Her breach of ethics with you was bad enough. Your sordid history, complete with activities engaged in even during the course of your relationship, has raised questions about how much Betsy knew about your crimes as well as when she knew it.”

“She wanted me to stop,” Melvin blurted out.

“But she didn’t report you, did she?” Lopez sighed again. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Potter. I’m doing all I can.”

“And what am _I_ supposed to do?” Melvin shouted.

There was a sound like Lopez was holding the phone away from his ear.

Melvin shouldn’t shout at one of the only people who could maybe help him. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“The person who informed on her—the lawyer, Matthew Murdock. Is there anything else he could tell the authorities?”

“I don’t _know_. I don’t know how he knew about us.” Melvin’s head was spinning. Maybe Murdock worked for Fisk after all.

“The bad news, Mr. Potter, is that it looks like the state wants to call Murdock as a witness against Betsy. Now, I’ll try not to let it go that far,” Lopez went on smoothly, “but anything you can do to unbalance him would be appreciated.”

Appreciated. Melvin was confused by the word for a second, and then it clicked. “The lawyer doesn’t just want to hurt Betsy,” Melvin said slowly. “He wants to hurt Mr. Fisk.”

“My immediate priority, Mr. Potter, is taking care of Betsy. Murdock is a threat to that.”

All right. Melvin settled firmly on the Murdock-never-worked-for-Fisk theory. Fisk obviously hated Murdock. Good, that was good to know. And Melvin didn’t like Mr. Lopez. Didn’t trust him. Lopez took him to a military shooting range once or twice and made Melvin practice doing things he knew Betsy wouldn’t like.

“Mr. Potter,” Lopez said, like he could tell Melvin was thinking independent thoughts. “If you can stop Murdock from testifying—”

“I couldn’t find him,” Melvin admitted, and a tiny part of him was hoping Lopez would leave it at that.

“Of course you can’t,” Lopez responded. “He’s currently in police custody for separate crimes entirely. But that doesn’t mean he’s not a threat. There are still plenty of ways he could destroy Betsy’s case.”

Melvin didn’t know enough about the law to challenge him on that. “But you can stop him, right?”

“I’ll try,” Lopez said seriously. “It’d be easier if you sent Murdock a message. Something that would destabilize him.”

Melvin hesitated. It felt wrong, doing something Betsy wouldn’t like just to help Betsy. “I don’t wanna kill anyone.”

“I would never ask that of you,” Lopez said, but Melvin didn’t believe him. More lies from another liar.

 

Foggy

His laptop was whirring to life on the table, the flashdrive bearing the data from the tapes setting beside it. Foggy swore his laptop never took so long to start up in his life. At least the air conditioning in their tiny room was nice. It was the little things.

Matt was—not _looking_ , obviously—but Matt seemed to be vaguely regarding the laptop like it was a bomb about to go off.

Finally the video popped up. “Ready?” Foggy asked. When Matt just closed his eyes to listen, Foggy hit play.

There was a corner of a hallway with a door, and it looked innocuous enough. But almost as soon as the door buzzed open and Matt onscreen stepped out, three inmates in orange appeared. There was no conversation, no niceties—they just attacked. And it was like Matt could tell what they were going to do before they even did it. Not that he didn’t still get hit. Like, a lot. But he kept going.

“Why’d you skip the beginning?” Matt interrupted suddenly.

Foggy paused the video. “I didn’t?”

“No, the…the beginning.” Frowning, he leaned closer like he could see what was on Foggy’s laptop. “Before I got into the hallway. The phone rang and I talked with Fisk, and before that the nurse drugged me.”

See, Foggy technically knew about all of that. Matt told him at one point, in an effort to catch Foggy up on the dumpster fire that his life had been before Fisk was taken down for the second time. It was still disconcerting to hear about it again. “You fought like that while _drugged?_ ”

“I know, it’s…not my best work.”

Foggy’s eyes practically bugged out. “Dude, most people couldn’t do what you’re doing here stone cold sober.”

Matt flashed a brief smile that Foggy might’ve suspected was fake if not for the way Matt ducked his head a little. “Point is, there’s missing footage.”

“I dunno, man. If a jury sees you get drugged first, that makes your fighting skills that much more unbelievable.” Foggy squinted at the frozen image on the screen. “Then again, they’re already pretty unbelievable. If this gets in front of a jury, we’re screwed.”

Matt’s eyes dropped away. “You don’t have to keep convincing me; I already agreed to take a plea. But, for the record, Fisk won’t want that footage going in front of a jury either. Even if the camera only picks up my side of it, I said his name. I think.”

“Fisk’s already in jail, so you saying his name doesn’t matter. Besides, everything said in that conversation is hearsay.” Which sucked. The visual footage could get in just fine, but any statements recorded within had to find their own exception before they were admissible.

“Okay, well…skip ahead a bit. I need to know if something else is missing.”

Foggy hit play and went back to marveling. Insane wasn’t a strong enough word for it. At one point, two guards attacked Matt _with nightsticks_. Which definitely made Matt look sympathetic and it made the whole prison system look rotten. Excellent. Alarms started going off in a hallway, and the screen began flashing red.

Matt winced even at the tiny, tinny sounds coming out of the speaker. “Yeah, that wasn’t pleasant.”

Understatement. All of a sudden, the Matt onscreen was pulled into another room. The angle switched to another new camera to show Matt being dragged out of the room, by…a guard?

“Wait,” Matt interrupted. “They skipped it.”

Foggy paused it again. “Skipped what?”

“The Albanians.”

“Who’s the guard?”

“An Albanian.”

“What?”

Matt started talking faster. “The Albanians weren’t working with the guards. They found me when I was trying to escape. That’s how I learned about Jasper Evans.”

Oh. A new idea lit up in Foggy’s brain. “Do you remember how many minutes you spent talking to them?”

“I was pretty out of it.” Matt tilted his head. “Five minutes? Four? Maybe?”

Foggy started pacing. “Those Albanians. Are they still around?”

“I don’t know. We’re not exactly pen pals.”

“Okay, but do you remember who they are?”

“Vic Jusufi,” Matt said readily. “And the other guy. I could…” He offered Foggy a smile that could only be described as _sly_. “I could probably identify him by scent, if that helps.”

“It actually might. How long were you in the nurse’s office?”

“Um. Forty minutes? Forty-five if you count the nurse attacking me and the phone call with Fisk.” He tapped the laptop. “Can you see the nurse in the exam room?”

Foggy rewound and squinted. “Uh, guy on the ground who’s not you and not wearing orange?”

“Sounds right.” Matt sounded relieved. “So that backs up our story that something happened in that room before the start of the footage.”

Excitement building, Foggy got up and started pacing. “So you’re saying the evidence we have is still missing, what, fifty minutes?”

“Yeah, give or take.”

Foggy stopped pacing, whirling around to point dramatically at his best friend. “You know what this means, right?”

Matt’s eyes lit up. “The rule of completeness?”

“I was thinking more like good old-fashioned mandatory disclosure.” The rule of completeness applied wherever evidence was missing something important, like pages of a report. Or, in this case, minutes of a video. Foggy could argue that the jury needed to see the missing footage to put everything else in context. If Foggy successfully convinced the judge, the available portion would be excluded unless the missing portion was included.

Foggy was a pretty good avocado, so he didn’t doubt his ability to make that argument. But he’d rather keep the rule of completeness in his back pocket and rely primarily on the mandatory disclosure rules. Because films were so powerful in front of a jury, and yet films were so easy to edit and manipulate, a defendant was supposed to be able to authenticate the videos. Including requesting any missing portions.

Matt folded his hands on the table, leaning forward alertly. “So we motion to compel. But the footage they cut doesn’t change the fact that I shouldn’t have, uh, been able to…do all of that.”

“Sure,” Foggy said easily, “but you think Fisk wants everything else getting out? And if Fisk is the one manipulating Tower—”

“It’s worth a shot,” Matt interrupted, and he actually sounded _hopeful_.

Perfect: they had a plan. If calling Fisk’s bluff could be considered a plan. Maybe Fisk wouldn’t care, maybe he’d let Tower send the whole video over and not care what a jury thought. But at least they weren’t rolling over. At least Matt was fighting.

He’d also started drumming his fingers pensively on the table. Foggy waited for him to figure out how to say whatever he wanted to say. “If Fisk wants to get to Karen,” he said at last, “why do this to _me?_ ”

That was the least of Foggy’s worries. “Fisk doesn’t wanna just blow her up with a bomb—he said he wanted to kill her face-to-face. Who d’you think’s the biggest obstacle to that?”

“Then Fisk should be trying to kill me, not incarcerate me.”

“Maybe Fisk’s running low on resources. Stone killed one of his assassins already and the FBI cut off all the criminal connections they could find—and all the criminal connections Karen could find, which is even more significant.” A new thought struck. “Or maybe he’s trying to discredit you. Didn’t Fisk say something about how we should be doing our jobs as defense attorneys?” Grimacing, Foggy sat on the edge of the table. “Maybe Fisk actually thinks Matt Murdock, attorney at law, is the bigger threat here.”

“Then he should be going after you,” Matt said dismissively. He paled a moment later. “He’ll be going after you.”

“Psh,” Foggy said, effortlessly mustering far more confidence than he felt. “My credibility is airtight. Fisk won’t waste his time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I'm like 98% sure that I got all these rules right. In other news, I finished my first year of law school!!! But my final exam for my criminal law class didn't go into insanity defenses at all, which was really rude considering that I've been using the Frank Castle case to practice the insanity defense. Oh, well.


	14. Sing to Me, Baby, in Your Native Tongue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Native Tongue" by Switchfoot (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYhrdH_GB2M).
> 
> I love Karen, I do, but what she's doing is so unethical auughh it feels wrong just writing it. Honestly.

Karen

The nice thing about having such a chaotic, unstable, sometimes-deadly life is that at some point, you stopped panicking when you got bad news. Apparently, Karen finally reached that point.

Sure, she was still annoyed that Matt thought it was appropriate to ask about _pizza_ at a time like this (although, yes, it had arrived and, yes, it was delicious and exactly what she was craving), but mostly she was just really glad Foggy was with him, not only so Foggy could keep him from doing anything too stupid but because Foggy was subtly sending her texts to keep her updated.

_Brett’s actually being nice for once._

_What just happened, video!Matt just slammed this guy’s head into the exam table._

_Karen, Matt’s like bff with Albanians or something._

_So apparently we’re missing a bunch of super important footage so I’m gonna throw the book at Tower._

_I’m gonna throw other stuff at Tower too but definitely the book._

_Karen. We’ve got this, don’t worry._

_How’s the unborn?_

She rolled her eyes and texted back: _The unborn likes pizza. What kinds of stuff do u wanna throw at Tower?_

The next second, her phone was ringing. “Why, do you know something?” Foggy demanded.

She blinked. “You can’t just assume I know something.”

“You _always_ know something.”

“I was just thinking. Remember when we talked with Tower after Reyes was killed?” She leaned back against a stack of pillows on the bed. The stack kept growing whenever she wasn’t looking. She didn’t know whether Stone or Matt was responsible. “Remember what he said?”

“About Reyes covering up what happened to Castle?”

“About the fact that Tower knew about it.”

There was a moment of quiet. Then Foggy said: “Huh.”

“I mean, maybe he wasn’t the one doing it himself, but if he knew what was going on and didn’t say anything…”

“Yikes,” Foggy muttered. “I forgot about that. What with, you know, having been shot and everything. Karen, I’ve decided I need to stop getting shot.”

“Good plan,” she agreed. “But I’m betting Tower’s memory might be a bit better than yours. If we let him know that we remember, too…”

“Are you—hang on.” There was a shuffling sound, then a door opening and closing, then another door opening and closing. When Foggy spoke again, it was a whisper. “Are you suggesting that we _blackmail_ the district attorney?”

“That’s what Fisk’s doing,” she pointed out.

That was definitely the wrong thing to say. “Yes, Karen, because he’s what the kids call a _bad guy_.”

“No, I know,” she said quickly.

“Then what exactly are you suggesting?”

Well…she was suggesting that they blackmail the district attorney. “Nothing.”

“We could turn him in to the Bar,” Foggy said. “That whole process would take a while. Or we could file an affidavit with the court, and then it’d take…what, a month? I think? A month for the judge to decide if Tower should be suspended. And then the judge’ll appoint someone else. Someone Fisk doesn’t have any dirt on, I hope.”

“Good,” Karen said neutrally. “Do that.”

“Right. I’ll see if I can slow everything else down, buy Matt time so we can get Tower off the case.” Foggy sighed, a particularly frazzled sigh that she recognized from the Punisher trial. “Good thinking, Karen. I’ll keep you posted. You need anything?”

“I’m good on pizza, since I guess you two won’t be having any.”

Foggy laughed shakily. “Yeah. Think of it as our gift to you, I guess. Talk to you later.”

She kept her voice calm and encouraging as she said goodbye, and as soon as he hung up, she called Tower’s office. See, there was a reason why she and Matt kept Foggy around. He was their anchor, their moral compass. But there was also a reason why she and Matt belonged together.

They both knew that sometimes sticking within the confines of the law just wasn’t good enough.

 

Ella

Spiderman was _amazing_. He couldn’t be around all the time because he had school, but he was always doing homework at her house now ever since Matt brought him a couple days ago. He had dinner with them, but Mom was also constantly trying to feed him snacks. She seemed flustered, though. It was a new word she heard Mom use once; she liked how it sounded. Mom and Dad _both_ seemed flustered. Ella just couldn’t figure out _why_.

So she started paying more attention.

But she noticed more things about Peter than about Mom or Dad. Like the fact that even when Peter was supposed to be doing homework, he always looked up when Mom or Dad came into a room. Well, Peter looked up lots of other times, too. Probably because he heard something far away. It reminded her of Matt. But Peter was always so _focused_ on her parents, even when he wasn’t talking to them or anything.

Right now, Peter was sitting upside-down on the living room ceiling, wearing his ugly suit but not his mask and reading an old paperback. Ella wasn’t sure if he sat like that because he liked it or because it made her laugh every time. Dad wasn’t home yet, but Mom was, and she was packing extra chicken into Tupperware in the kitchen. If she did what she normally did, she’d pull the chicken out of the fridge and stick it in Peter’s backpack right before he left. Hopefully when he wasn’t looking. But while Ella watched, Mom popped out of the kitchen like she’d been wanting to say something for a while and finally couldn’t hold back anymore.

She didn’t blink at the sight of Spiderman on the ceiling. “Are you _sure_ you don’t have anything else to do right now, Peter? No events or clubs or anything?”

And there it was—all Peter’s attention on her, even though he didn’t _sound_ upset or even intense at all. “Yep. Just reading.” He waved the book like proof.

“We just don’t want to interrupt the rest of your life.”

“It’s cool,” he said easily. “I miss a lot of stuff being Spiderman. People are used to it. They just think it’s a fancy internship.”

“Or if your parents needs you back home,” she persisted. “For chores, or even just spending time together.”

His face suddenly looked almost… _stiff_. “They’re good.”

Mom went to stand underneath him. “Couldn’t we give them something? Like a gift card, so your parents can have a date night?”

“Nope,” Peter said quickly, and he kept talking just as quickly. “They’re good, I like it here, they know I like it here, so it’s all good.” He cleared his throat. “I’m gonna go check outside.”

With that, he dropped down from the ceiling, snatched his mask, and was out the back door in a flash, leaving Mom in middle of the room with her hands on her hips, forehead creased like she was trying to solve a problem.

“I’m gonna go with him,” Ella announced.

Mom sighed. “Maybe you should leave him alone for a bit.”

Ella tried to pick up Peter’s backpack, failed because it was heavier than the car, and pulled out a book at random instead. “I can bring him his homework.”

Mom sighed again. “All right. Just don’t bother him, okay?”

“I won’t,” she promised. She skipped out into the backyard to find Peter perched way, way up on top of the swing set. Dad got it for her as a late Christmas present back in January, which was kind of funny since it was too cold to use very much in the winter, but now that it was spring, she liked to sit outside and swing and think up new imaginary worlds. She hadn’t even tried to sit on top of the bars, though, like Spiderman was. She stared at the frame of the swing set, trying to figure out how to get up so high.

 _He_ probably just jumped. It wasn’t fair.

“Don’t come up here, Ella,” Peter warned. “It’s not safe.”

“You’re up there,” she retorted.

He landed beside her so fast she jumped a little. “No, I’m not,” he said innocently, leaning against the frame.

Instead of arguing, she handed him his book and sat on the swing nearest him, kicking lightly off the ground. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just on the lookout.”

“On my swing set,” she said skeptically. “Did Mom upset you?”

He looked surprised. “No.”

“Then why’d you leave like that?”

He swung his legs over the edge. “It just feels weird, being thanked just for helping when helping people like this is _literally_ what I do.”

She tilted her head thoughtfully. At therapy, usually when Miss Esther didn’t believe Ella, she didn’t say anything. She just waited until Ella decided to either change her story to the truth or say whatever she was keeping secret. So she stayed quiet.

So did Peter.

Ella narrowed her eyes at him, wishing he wasn’t wearing his mask. “Are you _sure?_ ”

“Are you interrogating me?” It sounded like he was rolling his eyes, even though the giant bug-lenses didn’t move. “I like your mom. She’s cool.”

She thought hard, but couldn’t think of another way to ask him why he’d left in such a hurry, even though she was confident there was some other reason.

He obviously noticed her staring. “What?”

“Am I bothering you?”

He laughed. “You’re pretty cool too, when you’re not yelling at me.”

“I don’t even yell that much,” she protested. “Mom and Dad keep telling me not to.”

“Yeah, but pretty much everything you do is loud. Not as loud as at school, but still loud.”

“Oh. I guess your hearing’s even better than Matt’s?” she asked knowingly.

He laughed again, but this time it sounded surprised. “His hearing’s way better.”

Oh no. “So he probably hates how loud I am?”

“Uh…” Peter got quiet for a second. She wished again that he wasn’t wearing his mask so she could see his expression. “No? He’s got his senses more under control. And he’s used to you.”

It sounded like he was just saying all that to make her feel better. Ella felt a guilt sinking in her chest. She’d have to try harder to be quieter around Matt.

“Seriously, Ella, it’s okay. He really likes you.”

The guilt was replaced by warm happiness. “Matt talks about me?”

“All the time.”

She kicked harder, swinging higher. “Maybe you should talk to him about whatever you’re upset about.” Then she braced herself for him to insist that he wasn’t upset.

But he didn’t. Instead, he gave a very small nod.

 

Fisk

Wilson’s eyes were on the cracked white wall of his cell. It wasn’t _Rabbit in a Snowstorm_ , and in some ways, staring at a white wall felt wrong. But aside from the bed, the toilet, and the sink, nothing else could occupy his vision. So he studied the wall, memorizing it until he saw the thin lines spiderwebbing across its otherwise smooth surface even when he closed his eyes. Recently, he’d become particularly preoccupied with a deep, jagged crack, deeper than the others. Someone tried to heal the wound with plaster, but the meager attempt only served to make the scar more prominent.

The heavy door opened behind him. He no longer stiffened as he had for a week after Murdock broke into his cell. Whatever Murdock’s plan was, it seemed that assassinating Wilson in his cell was no longer an option. Today, it was merely a guard come to fetch Wilson for his appointment with Lopez.

As always, the visiting area provided no sense of relief. His cell was an indignity, and a severe restriction on his liberty, but it also provided privacy. There were only four other people in the visiting area besides the guards, but Wilson noticed every eye flick towards him.

He could have endured living indefinitely under a microscope if only he knew that doing so would serve Vanessa. For now, adhering to the rules was necessary to maintain his links to Lopez and Tower—links which he needed to orchestrate his revenge. But as soon as he delivered justice, no prison would contain him. He settled into a thin, cold chair to wait.

Lopez slipped into the room a few minutes later, winding amongst the tables like an eel slithering between coral. With his dark suits and flat brown hair, he struck Fisk as a man who wished he could disappear. But not because he was timid, no. Fisk knew from Donovan that Lopez was effusive enough in a courtroom to engage the most disinterested jury. But Lopez, it seemed, would rather everyone else forget he existed.

It was easier to manipulate them that way.

“Mr. Potter has been activated,” Lopez reported, sliding into the chair opposite Wilson.

“Has he learned the truth about Murdock?” Wilson asked.

“I don’t believe so, Mr. Fisk.”

Wilson nodded. Given Potter’s complicated history with Daredevil, it had seemed best to keep the truth about Murdock’s identity a secret. Fisk had assumed that the harm Murdock allegedly posed to Betsy would be a sufficient motivator on its own. So far, his guess seemed on the mark. “And Murdock’s case? Any news?”

“Mr. Nelson has filed a motion to compel.”

“Which means?”

“He knows we didn’t give him all the footage.” Lopez leaned forward, but Wilson kept his eyes on his handcuffs, noting the weak points of the metal. “He wants access to everything on the tapes.”

“The conversation with the Albanians.” Wilson’s head twitched in acquiescence. “Send it.”

“Mr. Fisk…he also wants footage from before the fight broke out. From when Mr. Murdock was assaulted by the nurse until Mr. Murdock entered the hallway. That time would include your phone conversation with him.”

Wilson looked up. “He said my name.”

Lopez drew in a deep breath. “At that time, you were supposed to be in FBI custody. The fact that you had access to the prison, enough to establish a phone conversation—”

“The extent of my reach at that time isn’t news, Lopez, and I am not on trial.”

“No,” he agreed cautiously, “but it calls into question the legitimacy of all the operations at the prison, which by extension sheds doubt on the reliability of all the footage collected from any surveillance cameras.”

Wilson began twisting his fingers together, then realized what he was doing and stopped. “Well,” he said softly. “That is disappointing.”

Briefly, he considered asking for his opinion on the matter, but there was no reason to expect Tower to be honest. Wilson wasn’t sure where Tower’s loyalties lay, but they certainly did not belong to Wilson. Which left him to rely on Lopez’s judgement for legal advice. Lopez, it seemed, was loyal to the game. Forging connections, collecting assets, and, of course, memorizing every intricacy of the law—that was how Lopez operated. And he traded in favors, which Wilson found to sometimes be more effective than the threats Wilson so often wielded.

“Don’t send the missing footage,” Wilson decided.

Lopez inhaled; it always sounded as if he had to gather his strength to exchange words with Wilson. “The rest of the video will be inadmissible if it’s incomplete. I guarantee it.”

“Don’t send the missing footage,” Wilson repeated. “We don’t need it.”

“At this point, it’s the best evidence we have that Murdock is the vigilante. Everything else is too attenuated.”

“But you’ve seen the footage. What’s your verdict, Lopez?”

“I believe you,” Lopez muttered. “You don’t have to keep pushing.” Lopez waited a moment before speaking again. “If I may, Mr. Fisk…I wouldn’t let the case worry you. Between Nelson and Murdock, it seems like Murdock is by far the easiest to distract inside or outside of the legal system. If Mr. Potter carries out his objective, I’m sure Murdock will be quite incapable of obstructing you. At least, not to his regular extent. Combined with taking out Nelson…well.”

Wilson nodded. His plan wasn’t foolproof, none of it was. But there were multiple redundancies in place, with several different windows of opportunity. “Thank you, Lopez. Have you found someone to deal with Nelson?”

“I’ve found several ideal candidates, but their demands are high. One needs our assistance to relocate to the Marshall Islands. No extradition agreement,” he explained, running his hand down his dull silver tie.

“And the other?”

“He wants to stay in Hell’s Kitchen with his family. He wants a guarantee that he won’t be prosecuted.”

Fisk nodded to himself. “I’ll speak with Tower about it. Keep building the case against Murdock. Between Nelson and Murdock, Murdock is not the biggest threat, and this was only one of several options.”

“But you…you still want me to keep building the case?”

Wilson felt a flash of irritation. He fixed his eyes on the handcuffs yet again, feeble restraints that felt more like props allowing him to play a part. “That’s what I just said. And the case against Karen Murdock?”

“It’s ready. It’s _been_ ready.”

Good. That was the most important piece of the puzzle by far. “Thank you. You may go.”

He didn’t look to see how Lopez responded, but he heard the chair scoot back, heard the door open and close. He heard the guards approach. They escorted him to his cell where he sat in front of a cracked white wall and tried to ignore the very small part of him that was glad for this hinderance, grateful for every complication. He had no doubt that he would achieve justice in the end, but after that…what would be the point?

Vanessa was gone.

As long as he was plotting, as long as he was moving towards vengeance, he could dull the ache of her loss. But once Karen Murdock was dead, what then?

Perhaps he would use whatever resources he had left to end his own ineffably weary existence. He was not sure whether that would reunite him with her…but at least he would no longer have to endure without her.

 

Melvin

The more Melvin learned about Matthew Murdock, the less Melvin wanted to do anything to hurt him. Blinded as a kid, raised in an orphanage, making a living defending people at almost no charge. But the thing that mattered the most to Melvin wasn’t any of that. The thing that mattered the most was the fact that, apparently, Murdock represented Special Agent Ray Nadeem of the FBI.

Murdock  _must_  have known Nadeem was being manipulated by Fisk. And Nadeem did horrible, horrible things. Well…he let those things happen. Helped them happen. He drove the man in the devil suit to Clinton Church. That didn’t seem all that different from how Melvin made the suit in the first place.

So if Murdock helped Nadeem, maybe Murdock would help Melvin, too.

And why would a man like that turn Betsy over?

All of this was starting to make Melvin think that Murdock wasn’t the person who’d turned Betsy over at all.

But Melvin had to do  _something_. Otherwise, Fisk might decide not to just let Betsy get in trouble with the law. He might hurt her. He might  _kill_  her.

Maybe there was a middle ground somewhere. Some way for Melvin to get Fisk to calm down without Melvin actually hurting anyone. Maybe. But if Murdock was in police custody, Melvin would have to get more creative.

Murdock’s law partner was also unreachable and Murdock’s wife seemed to have disappeared. At first, Melvin thought that didn’t leave anyone else. (Which was sad, come to think of it.) But he kept digging. Murdock’s dad was dead, and his mom disappeared, which was why Murdock ended up at the orphanage. But no one said his mom died and there was a nun at the orphanage who shared his name. Well, even though were a lot of Murdocks in Hell’s Kitchen, something about her felt  _right_.

Margaret Grace Murdock. Melvin didn’t know much about the church or any of that, but he knew nuns weren’t supposed to get married and have kids. Kind of like how Betsy wasn’t supposed to be with him. Maybe that was why Melvin decided he wanted to know more about her. So he walked over to the church and joined everyone else for some kind of service, following along as best he could until he heard someone say her name.

Maggie, they called her.

He had one of his circular sawblades tucked into his belt under his shirt, but once he saw how small she was, he figured he wouldn’t even need it.

 

Tower

Blake hated his life and the worst part was, hating it seemed like the only decent thing he could do. Wilson Fisk was blackmailing him with a detailed list of all the crime that had gone on right under Blake’s nose, threatening to publish it at any instant. Nothing Fisk might publish was criminally damning, sure—Blake was guilty of nothing more than ignorance. But when you were the district attorney, ignorance itself was pretty damning. If Blake wanted an iota of a chance at his next election, he had to play along.

And, well, it wasn’t like Fisk was getting him to do anything illegal. The footage was turned over lawfully, if belatedly. There was a string attached, sure. But the string was pretty much just: “Use this evidence,” which Blake was…not _happy_ to do, per se, but willing.

If Matt Murdock, impossible though it seemed, was Daredevil, that made Murdock a criminal. Taking him down was literally Blake’s job. When you framed it that way, it all looked simple.

So why did he feel so guilty?

He rubbed at his temple, wishing he could make a dent in the ache building behind his eyes. It seemed like everything connected to either Wilson Fisk or Matt Murdock was doomed to escalate nonstop. He wondered, distantly, how Franklin Nelson handled it. If the defense attorney wanted to tear his hair out, he didn’t act like it.

Then Blake stepped into his office and _really_ wanted to tear his hair out because he immediately recognized the profile of the woman sitting at his desk, despite the fact that her back was to him. Thin, wearing a professional gray sweater, blonde hair trailing down her back.

“Who let you in here?” he hissed, stalking around to stand at the side of the desk.

Karen Murdock shrugged innocently. “That would be your secretary, I guess.”

“Your husband’s been arrested, you know I can’t talk to you!”

“So don’t talk.” She folded her hands in her lap. “Listen.”

Blake gritted his teeth. This was the last thing he needed to deal with today. Not that there would ever be any good time to talk with Karen Murdock. She’d been an inconvenience since she first showed up in his office about the Castle case, warning him how far she’d go to protect the tiny firm of Nelson and Murdock, knowing things she shouldn’t and demanding answers.

He couldn’t help feeling relieved she hadn’t gone to law school.

She pointed to his chair. “Go ahead and sit. This could take a while.”

“I’m calling security.” He reached for the phone on the desk.

“Elliot Grote.”

Oh, great, not this again. Blake lowered his hand back to his side.

“Reyes violated a witness protection contract and planned a sting using that witness as bait, ordering a shoot-to-kill order on Castle. Remember? I’m thinking you remember, Tower, since you were the assistant district attorney at the time. But what I _don’t_ remember is you doing anything about it.”

They couldn’t prove that Blake knew Reyes’ plan. Then again, Blake would have a hard time arguing ignorance while preserving his reputation for competence. He gritted his teeth. “The situation with your client was unfolding rapidly, Mrs. Murdock. Decisions had to be made in the heat of the—”

“And that’s not the first time you kept quiet in the face of Reyes’ corruption,” she swept on. “She _created_ the Punisher when Frank Castle’s family was massacred and she covered it up. Maybe you only found out about it after the fact, but…” Her eyes narrowed. “I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure you could be criminally prosecuted for that. And even if you’re not, do you really think anyone would vote for you if I published what you did?”

So this was coercion. He took a deep breath. “Mrs. Murdock. Are you threatening me?”

She blinked steadily at him. “I’m motivating you.”

“To do what, specifically?”

“To drop all charges against Matt Murdock.”

“He hasn’t been indicted yet.”

Her ice-blue eyes flashed. “I don’t know where you are in the process and I don’t care—I’m not here to argue legal details with you. I’m just telling you to do whatever you have to do to drop the case.”

Cracking a humorless smile, he finally sat across from her. “Thank you for clearing that up. See, everything you’ve just said sounds like coercion to me.” If that startled her, she gave no sign. He kept going regardless. “I’m not sure how familiar you actually are with New York penal law, but section 135 states that exposing a secret with the express purpose of subjecting me to hatred, contempt, or ridicule makes you guilty of coercion in the second degree. The fact that you’re trying to cause me to violate my duty as a public servant pushes you into first degree. That’s a felony charge, Mrs. Murdock.”

“But truth is a defense, isn’t it?” She tilted her head slowly to the side. “I’m not a lawyer, but I did read up on it. If I’m threatening to expose your criminal conduct, like misusing your office, and you actually did those things, it’s an affirmative defense. Right?”

“Only part of the affirmative defense,” he corrected gently. “Your sole purpose in threatening me must be to compel me to right the wrong caused by any alleged wrongdoing. Pestering me about your husband’s case doesn’t fit.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I only care about Castle and Grote, the two victims of your coverup. Who said anything about Matt Murdock’s case?”

“You did,” he snapped. “Five seconds ago.”

It was her turn to smile falsely. “I guess you’ll just have to prove that, won’t you?”

If that was how she wanted to play. He studied her face. “I just have one question."

"I'm listening."

"Is Matt Murdock Daredevil?”

She didn’t hesitate. “No.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got kinda cocky with my legal research abilities, and then I got soooo stuck trying to find defenses to coercion because if you search for "New York coercion defense" all you get is how to use coercion as a defense, not how to find a defense to coercion, if that makes sense. So consider me humbled. (Technically, the defense as Karen explains it is still a bit oversimplified, I think.)
> 
> And shout-out to WhyWhyNot for assuming I was going to avoid the whole Melvin-gets-manipulated-into-being-an-enemy-for-plot-reasons trope back before I'd actually completely decided whether to avoid that trope, and being excited about the avoidance of said trope and pointing out how frustrating that trope is, and hence pushing me firmly away from the trope. Youdabest.


	15. Pour Ourselves Out Like a Wine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Blessed Are the Ones" by Audrey Assad (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9omkYMGBgg).

Tower

Blake kept his head high as he went to sit across from Fisk at the prison. He’d secured reinforced handcuffs and was confident that, whatever else Fisk was capable of, he wouldn’t be able to snap Blake's neck today. But he hated visiting the prison, hated knowing that over half the people in this building would happily shoot him in the gut, hated having to stare into Fisk’s beady eyes.

Well, if things kept going like this, Blake could always move to Alaska. He liked fishing.

“Murdock was released from custody today,” he reported, wincing as some alarm flared briefly to life in the hallway behind him. Fisk didn’t flinch.

“I heard,” Fisk said evenly.

“Are you moving against Nelson now?”

“I thought you didn't want to know.”

Blake said nothing.

Fisk shrugged. “Not until after Potter strikes. I want Murdock unbalanced. Otherwise he might protect Nelson.” His large head cocked to the side. “What about Spiderman?”

He and Daredevil had clearly been working together. Now Fisk was convinced that Murdock was using Spiderman to protect either Karen or Nelson. “No sign of him,” Blake said, yet again.

“Keep looking,” Fisk growled.

“I have other crime to worry about,” Blake pointed out testily. He wasn’t Fisk’s personal police force. He _wasn’t_. “Not to mention covering my own tracks. Karen came to see me.”

“And that’s why you released Murdock?”

“I released Murdock because we didn’t have enough evidence to get an indictment without that footage,” Blake snapped. He didn’t mention that some of the police officers he’d encountered at the station had been less than thrilled with the whole situation. They were the clean cops, and whatever they thought about vigilantism in general, they seemed to think they owed Daredevil thanks for purging the NYPD of those on Fisk’s payroll. Honestly, it would’ve been a relief to let Murdock go even without Karen’s threats.

“What did she want, then?”

“She’s using your tactics.” When Fisk only looked mildly interested, Blake sharpened his voice. “She’s threatening to go to the media with how I helped Reyes sweep the Central Park Massacre under the rug.”

“Yes,” Fisk rumbled. “She likes to do that. Likes to threaten with her stories, likes to think the media is her weapon. It’s fitting, then, how easy it will be to wield it against her.”

Blake's stomach twisted with anxiety. “I’ve got enough without the media,” he mumbled.

“She’s a well-known journalist. A jury is already biased in her favor.”

That was what voir dire was for, but Blake couldn’t bring himself to argue. She was a criminal, he reminded himself. She deserved what was coming. It wasn’t his fault that the story was so heinous.

 

Matt

He heard Karen’s heartbeat waiting for him in his apartment and smiled. He’d told her she didn’t need to come by, but he hadn’t tried any harder than that to convince her to stay away, so he really wasn’t surprised.

Frank barked once, and Karen opened the door a second later as he was coming down the hall. She slipped outside immediately to wrap her arms around him. “Congratulations,” she whispered.

If Fisk really was behind Tower’s suspicion, there was no way he’d be satisfied with letting Matt get away just because the security footage was inadmissible. But one thing was for sure: Fisk (and Tower) had lost the element of surprise. Fisk was trying to send Tower after Daredevil and Matt wouldn’t be caught off guard again.

“Foggy deserves the congratulations,” Matt told her, kissing her forehead.

She hummed in disagreement. “Both of you do.”

“Actually…” He nudged past her into the apartment, toeing off his shoes while Frank circled him with her tail beating the air. “Maybe you should save some congratulations for yourself.”

“What?” She sounded perfectly confused.

“You smell like dusty books, gunpowder, and Blake Tower.” He folded his arms across his chest. “What’d you do, Karen?”

She closed the front door firmly behind him. “I told him to lay off my husband.”

“Karen,” he said exasperatedly.

“What? I told him to leave you alone and reminded him that he doesn’t really have a leg to stand on anyway, not after he let Reyes cover up the Castle—”

“You blackmailed him,” Matt realized, torn between the sinking feeling in his gut, a sliver of guilty appreciation, and a complete lack of surprise.

Flouncing past him, she viciously jerked open the fridge to yank out two beers. “Yeah, I did, which is what Fisk did when he set Tower on you in the first place.” She thrust one of the beers at him. “So you’re welcome.”

He accepted it without hesitation, but he didn’t remove the cap yet, instead tapping his fingers uncertainly against the bottle’s mouth. “Does Foggy know?”

She wrapped her arms around herself. “No.”

He took a deep breath. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Maybe because you were arrested?”

“You didn’t tell _either_ of us.”

“You didn’t tell either of us when you broke into Fisk’s cell.”

Right. He hadn’t even told her he knew she was pregnant until way, way too late. He twisted the cap off with a bit more force than was strictly necessary. It was just…he’d thought he was getting better at this stuff.

Unfolding her arms, she took a slow sip of her own drink. “You’re mad at me.”

“No.” He wasn’t mad about what she’d done but about the fact that she’d felt the need to do it. “I’m…I’m grateful. I’m not in jail. And that means I can do this.” Setting his bottle on the counter, he pulled her closer. Somehow, she felt _softer_ , and she smelled incredible. “How are you? Both of you?”

“We’re good. We’re super good.” She gently moved his hand over her stomach—his left hand. He’d stopped wearing the sling on his right arm ages ago, but it still needed a few more days before it’d be completely healed. “We missed you.”

“I wasn’t in custody that long.”

“I mean, we’ve missed you in general. Everything’s been so crazy, since…”

Since Vanessa’s death. It struck him that he really didn’t know how she was doing with that. But he had no idea how to raise the question without it feeling like an ambush. Maybe he should ask Foggy for advice. Or his therapist. If he still had a therapist—he hadn’t made it to a session since hearing the heartbeat. (That…might explain some things.)

Slowly, he pulled her over to the couch, which Frank took as an invitation to hop up and join them.

“The kid’s gonna need a room eventually,” she said, curling her legs up underneath her and scratching the puppy’s ears.

She sounded so peaceful that he instantly decided to save the investigation on her sense of guilt or lack thereof for later. “Are you suggesting we move into an actual house, Mrs. Murdock?”

“Do you have a problem with an actual house?”

“No.”

She made a skeptical sound.

“I like being up high,” he admitted reluctantly, trying to imagine himself running around suburban rooftops every night. He hated suburban roofs. They were probably his least favorite part of visiting the Valliers.

“You do realize how expensive a bigger apartment will be.”

“It doesn’t have to be bigger. Just…more interior walls.” He tilted his head. “Or maybe one of Foggy’s cousins could put in more walls for us here. We could put something under the stairs.”

Her hand brushed along the back of the couch until it touched his arm. “You’d have to find somewhere else for the suit.”

He tried not to read into that and assume she was suggesting he get rid of the suit entirely. Then again, she’d insisted, before, that their kid wouldn’t need him to be a hero, at least not the kind in a mask. That their kid would have more than enough just with him. But Daredevil wasn’t something external, something he could shed. It was part of him…just like boxing was part of Jack.

And everyone knew how that turned out.

She cleared her throat. “Besides, I don’t want the kid to read Harry Potter and freak out about living under the stairs.”

“I’ll brush up on real estate,” he promised. “And…cribs. They make different kinds, right?”

“What’re you gonna do, compare specs?”

“Obviously.” He flashed her a grin. “And find the softest blankets.” That much he could do. The rest of it….

She leaned her head against her arm. “Matt?”

“Yeah?”

“I keep forgetting.”

He raised his eyebrows.

She wriggled a little closer, squishing Frank between them. “I mean, I _can’t_ forget, not really, not when I’m so tired and have to pee all the time and every other smell makes me want to throw up. But it’s like…it’s one thing to feel pregnant, you know?”

“Not really, no.”

He could practically hear her roll her eyes. “It’s one thing to feel pregnant, but I keep forgetting that being pregnant means we’re actually having a _kid_. And whenever I do think about it, it’s just…”

The slight scent of salt in the air made him freeze. “Karen?”

“Shut up, it’s just hormones.” She scrubbed at her eyes with her hand.

“What’s wrong?” he asked carefully.

“Nothing, I just…I keep thinking about my mom.”

She barely talked about her mom. In fact, Matt sometimes wondered if she didn’t talk about her because sharing the memories felt like giving away something precious, like if she talked about them too casually they might become less sacred. “What was she like?” he asked tentatively.

“Nothing like me.”

He softened his voice. “Tell me.”

There was the quiet sound of her running her hand through Frank’s fur, of Frank’s appreciative sigh. “She was so kind. She was always so kind to people who didn’t deserve it. It never mattered what someone did, she was just…there for them.” She swallowed. “She wouldn’t have left you, Matt.”

He tensed. “I’m…not sure what you mean by that.”

Heat spread across her face. “Oh, um, I’m not talking about—about your mom. _I_ turned my back on you after you told me about Daredevil.”

“You didn’t turn your back on me,” he countered. “You needed time.”

“My mom would’ve treated you better,” she said flatly.

Reaching out, he found her other hand, the one that wasn’t petting Frank, and held it. “Tell me more.”

“Well, we…” She tucked her hair behind her ears. “We lived in this tiny town, and I swear she knew everyone. Always had the front door unlocked, always ready to be there for someone if anyone came in, always ready to give herself to anyone who needed help. Didn’t matter _what_ they needed. Food, a conversation, or just a quiet place to crash.” Her voice changed, becoming distant. “I had this friend in middle school. Her parents were getting divorced and it was like her house wasn’t really a home anymore, you know? It was just a place. So she came over to my house, just so she could be around my mom. And my dad, I guess.” She paused. “He wasn’t so bad back then.”

Matt squeezed her hand.

“I remember I asked her, once, why she was so kind to people. I wanted to be like her, but I also kind of figured she was just one of those people who naturally loves people, you know? Imagine my disappointment when she told me how hard she had to work at it.”

“You don’t think you work hard to be kind?” he asked in disbelief.

“Not like she always did.” Carefully, she slipped her hand free of Matt’s. “And I guess I just wish our kid was getting someone like her for a mom instead of…”

“Hey.” He pulled her closer, nudging Frank off the couch and ignoring the dog’s disgruntled huff. “Don’t say that.”

“Fine, but I’m still gonna think it.”

He gathered his thoughts. This wasn’t a closing argument in front of a jury—this was far, far more important. “I think you’re underestimating the good that you do.”

“What good? Investigating? Reporting? Half the time that’s just because I’m so angry at the terrible people in this world, not because—”

“Not because you care about people like Elena Cardenas? Or Grotto? Or Frank Castle? Or Jasper Evans or any of our other clients?”

Her heart started beating faster. “It’s not that simple. You said…you said once that we’re all just trying to do more good than harm. And sometimes I can’t help but think of how exhausting that is, trying to…keep score like that. Especially when I’ve—” She cut herself off.

Oh. She’d believed him before, but maybe that was because he’d told her in the wake of their defeat of Fisk. Now, so soon after she’d killed Vanessa, not to mention after she’d blackmailed the district attorney…it made sense why thinking in terms of balancing good and evil deeds wouldn’t be so encouraging.

“You know,” he said lightly, “I’m glad that the kid can’t hear us yet, or anything.”

She let out a startled laugh. “What?”

“Because we’ve kind of been a mess ever since you got pregnant. And that goes for both of us,” he added. “I think we should agree to not do anything dumb for the next eighteen years. Sound good?”

“Are you gonna write me a list? Like Foggy did for you?”

He shook his head. “I’m just thinking we should work more as, you know…a team. So no matter what Fisk throws at us, no matter what mistakes either of us make…I want us to deal with it together.”

“Okay,” she said slowly.

“I mean, I want us to deal with it together from the _beginning_ , not try to solve it on our own first and then work together only when that fails.” He focused on her heartbeat, her breathing, the brush of her hair over her shoulder as she tilted her head at him. “Deal?”

“Yeah, Matt,” she whispered. “Deal.”

 

Maggie

She’d just sat down for five minutes of quiet when Sister Anna tapped lightly on the doorframe to the prayer room. “Maggie? Got a call from the corner station. They have Simon.”

Gathering her patience, Maggie got to her feet. “I’ll take care of it. Thank you, Anna.”

It was far from the first time one of the kids was tempted by the array of snacks and other pocket-sized items sold at the gas station just down the block. Privately, Maggie thought God must have placed these particular owners at this particular store on purpose, since the Thompsons had never called the police since the first incident. Once the Thompsons realized that the shoplifters belonged in the care of the orphanage, they just called the nuns.

So Maggie hurried down the street. The bell over the door chimed as she stepped inside to find Simon sitting on a small chair behind the counter, Mr. Thompson standing over him, tall and thin and bearded, with his arms crossed.

“Simon.” Maggie crouched down in front of him. “This is the third time since Christmas.”

Simon’s expression remained stony, though he kept his eyes hidden behind overlong blond bangs. He kicked at the leg of the chair with the heel of his foot.

“What was it?” Maggie asked Mr. Thompson.

Unfolding his arms, Mr. Thompson opened his hand to reveal a candy bar, a key ring, and a small flashlight.

Maggie faced the boy again. “Simon, you don’t need any of these things.”

He just kicked at the chair again.

Last time, it was candy and a small toy. The time before that, it was two sodas smuggled in a hoodie. “Simon, why did you take these?”

“I wanted to.”

“You know that when you take these, you’re hurting Mr. Thompson?”

Simon’s dark eyes flitted up to Mr. Thomson’s weathered face before dropping away. “I guess.”

“You know…” Maggie tilted her head to the side. “If Mr. Thompson _wanted_ , he could call the police and they would come instead of me. Instead, he’s been kind to you time after time.”

Simon’s face scrunched up guiltily. “So?”

He was a good boy, but he was new to this life. He’d never known his father at all, but he’d only lost his mother las year. And unlike some of the other kids who misbehaved in the Thompsons’ store, Simon didn’t seem to be acting out of boredom. She thought he was sad—and didn’t know how to deal with it, didn’t want to spend the time thinking about it to figure out how to deal with it. So he distracted himself.

It wasn’t so different from how many adults behaved, really.

She was trying to get enough kids interested in basketball to put two teams together, hoping that would be a better outlet. But none of the nuns knew the first thing about basketball, so that plan wasn’t working so well. Failing at solving the root of the problem, she was stuck trying to heal the symptoms.

“What do we do when we hurt people?” Maggie asked.

Simon hadn’t been with them long, but he knew this much. “Ask for forgiveness.” When Maggie waited pointedly, he turned to Mr. Thompson. “Please forgive me?”

Something like a smile flashed briefly across Mr. Thompson’s face. “You’re forgiven,” he said gruffly.

Now, Maggie had always found that children—and adults, for that matter—were more effectively motivated by their own thankfulness than by threats, especially when they understood the threat that could be offered but wasn’t. “Simon, three things are going to happen right now.” She paused, giving him the chance to imagine what _could_ happen. “First, you’re going to promise Mr. Thompson that you’ll be here tomorrow to help with whatever he needs, whenever he needs it.” She glanced up at Mr. Thompson. “I or one of the sisters will come with him to supervise.”

He shrugged like he didn’t care one way or the other, but she knew he’d come up with a job for Simon that was kid-friendly and almost fun.

She placed her hand on Simon’s knee. “This isn’t a punishment, Simon.” She smiled ruefully. “Though I suppose it might feel that way. But I want you to get to know Mr. Thompson, since you keep hurting him.” Maybe a relationship between them would disincline Simon from stealing again. “Second, you’re going to thank Mr. Thompson because he didn’t call the police even though you deserve it. Do you know what that’s called, what Mr. Thompson showed you?”

Simon shook his head.

“Mercy,” she said gently. “It means not getting something you deserve. It’s what God gave us through Jesus.” Then she held out her hand for the items Mr. Thompson had collected. She set the flashlight aside, but withdrew enough money from her pocket to pay for the candy bar and the key chain. These she handed to Simon. “You can keep these as very special reminders of grace. You remember what grace is?”

“Something I don’t deserve,” he answered dutifully.

“That’s exactly right. I want you to hang onto this key chain as a reminder of all the good things God has given us. Understand? And with this candy bar…” She wrinkled her nose playfully. “I want you to _enjoy_ it. But do you think you can enjoy it if your stomach’s all twisted up with feeling guilty?”

He shook his head again.

“Exactly,” she whispered. “Remember, Mr. Thompson has forgiven you, and so have I. Because you’re forgiven, you don’t have to feel guilty anymore. So go ahead and enjoy the grace I’ve given you, all right?”

He tightened his small hand around the candy and the key chain. “Thank you, Sister Maggie.”

Maggie wasn’t sure how much of that had actually sunk in and she was even less sure that he understood the analogy she was trying to make. But she was satisfied that one day, this conversation or others like it might mean something to him.

Mr. Thompson gave an approving nod. “I’ll put him to work now, Sister, if you don’t mind. But you don’t have to supervise”

“Thank you. We’ll need him back for dinner at five. If you’re finished with him before then, you know where to find us.” She squeezed Simon’s hand. “I’ll see you in a few hours at the latest.” He just nodded absently and pulled free so he could start unwrapping the candy.

She’d been upstaged by her own gift.

But she felt better as she walked out of the store. This would certainly not be the last time that Simon tried something like this, but, then, she didn’t work in an orphanage because children were always easy to love. _People_ weren’t always easy to love. And the love offered in the moments when someone was unlovely always struck her as a special kind of love.

It was a love she depended on. After all, she’d never been more unlovely than when she’d abandoned her family, yet God sent Paul Lantom to care for her anyway.

It was a nice thought to hold onto when a strange man came up behind her and locked his arm around her throat.

 

Melvin

The nun seemed lost in thought. Not aware at all of her surroundings, which was dangerous in a place like Hell’s Kitchen. Really, Melvin was far from the worst thing that could happen to her. He kept telling himself that as he cut off her air, pulling her into the shadows. She flailed, tried to twist around, but she was half his size. Couldn’t do much. And if anyone driving by noticed what was happening, they didn’t stop to help. He almost wished kidnapping her was harder, because that would make the choice not to use his sawblade feel more heroic.

She fell unconscious as he was pulling her the rest of the way into an alley. The next step was moving her somewhere private. Not the new shop where Stone showed up with the stranger. (The stranger was the one who wore the suit for Mr. Fisk, the man who used to be with the FBI. So far, Melvin just kept his head down about that, and the ex-agent didn’t seem to recognize Melvin. But Melvin was trying to stay ready in case that changed, in case something happened.)

For now, he stuffed the nun into Betsy’s car, which he’d borrowed just for this job, and drove her to Nelson and Murdock’s law office, an office that looked barely used anymore. Melvin wasn’t sure exactly why, but it seemed safe to assume that it was somehow connected to Mr. Fisk.

Everything was connected to Mr. Fisk. It was overwhelming.

The office was locked, but Melvin started making lock picks when he was six years old. He got both himself and the nun inside in under a minute. It was a nice place. A lobby, three offices, a conference room, a bathroom, a kitchen that smelled stale. He put the nun in one of the lobby chairs and poked through the kitchen until he found stuff to make tea. Then, while the mug of water was circling in the microwave, he took a picture of the nun and texted it to Mr. Lopez.

His phone rang seconds later, but it was Mr. Fisk’s voice that came through the speaker. “Who’s the woman?”

He must’ve been meeting the lawyer. Melvin should’ve called to make sure Lopez was alone before sending the picture. Too late now. “Don’t worry, Mr. Fisk. I did what you wanted.”

“Since I never gave you any specific direction, I’d like to know some details. Such as the identity of the woman.”

Melvin felt a flash of guilt. “She’s a nun. She’s close to Murdock. I kidnapped her because it’ll upset him until he can get to her.” Like how Melvin felt when he didn’t know what was happening to Betsy. “It’ll make him angry,” he added in a lower voice. A warning.

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “There are very few people close to Murdock,” Fisk said at last. Suspiciously, maybe. Melvin could never be sure with Mr. Fisk.

“She goes to his church,” Melvin insisted.

“What’s her name?”

This, _this_ was why Melvin hated playing against Fisk. His mind raced.

“Are you about to lie to me, Mr. Potter?”

“No, Mr. Fisk.” Melvin swallowed. What harm could it do? “Her name’s Murdock. I thought they might be connected.”

To his horror, Mr. Fisk didn’t say anything about Murdock being a common name. Didn’t say anything about Melvin being too quick to act without thinking.

Instead, Mr. Fisk just said, “Thank you,” and hung up.

Melvin lowered the phone and stared helplessly at the unconscious nun. “I’m sorry.”

He needed to get this over with. He shouldn’t have done this in the beginning. Should’ve just said no to Mr. Fisk and asked Mr. Murdock for help like a normal person instead of trying to do so many things at once. Gingerly, Melvin patted down the nun’s pockets until he found a phone. She had one of those swiping passcodes, so he tried a bunch of different motions until he swiped the right way and it unlocked.

There was one _Matthew_ in her contacts.

Melvin hovered his thumb over it. Calling Murdock from his mother’s phone would probably scare him and then he probably wouldn’t help. But at least now Melvin knew the nun really was his mother.

Huh. A _nun_.

But now that he had her, he wasn’t sure what to do with her. Wait, obviously. Wait for Murdock. Or Daredevil, if he showed up. Daredevil knew Murdock, right? Melvin didn’t want to use a nun to manipulate Daredevil into helping him, but…he was also prepared to give up the nun in exchange for Murdock.

When the microwave beeped, he dropped a packet of tea into the hot mug and put it on the table by the nun’s chair.

She didn’t notice when she woke up, eyes opening slowly before she jerked upright, coughing. “Who are you?”

Melvin didn’t answer.

“Why did you kidnap me?”

He still didn’t answer. The truth probably wouldn’t hurt, but he didn’t trust her.

She squinted around the room. “This is a law office. You brought me here on purpose.”

“I’m looking for Matthew Murdock,” he admitted.

To his surprise, she laughed. “And you thought the best way to do that was to kidnap a nun? He’s not _that_ Catholic.”

“But you’re not just a nun, are you?” he pushed.

“You caught me,” she said dryly. “I’m secretly an Avenger.”

Melvin folded his arms across his chest. “You’re not just a nun to _him_. Your name’s Murdock.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “This is Hell’s Kitchen. There’re a thousand people here named Murdock.”

He brandished her phone. “That’s his number in your phone.”

She didn’t even glance at the device. “I work at a church. I know a thousand people named Matthew.”

“Call him for me.”

“Why didn’t you do it?”

“Call him and tell him we need his help.”

“We,” she echoed.

Lowering the phone again, Melvin chewed nervously on the inside of his cheek. “Betsy needs help.”

Now her eyes widened. “Oh. You’re Melvin.”

She knew him? He was confused, but he kept his mouth shut.

Her eyes flicked over him like she was seeing him in a new light. Suddenly, she shook her head with a tiny, disbelieving laugh. “Thank you,” she said bizarrely. Then something in her voice hardened. “Melvin, can I be honest with you?”

“Yeah,” he said warily.

“Keeping me here is going to hurt you.” When he didn’t immediately respond, she kept going. “Daredevil’s going to find me.”

Probably. He shrugged.

Realization dawned and her eyes narrowed. “You’re using me as bait?”

That sounded terrible. Melvin cringed. “You’re not bait.” He held out the phone again. “Call Murdock.”

She folded her hands primly in her lap. “No. How is he supposed to help you, anyway?”

Melvin hesitated, but despite her rigid posture, there was something in her tone or her eyes or…he didn’t know. But there was something that made him feel like she actually kind of wanted to help. So he found himself explaining how Betsy needed a lawyer and how he thought Mr. Murdock not only could help but _would_ help. Because Mr. Murdock helped people.

“But you don’t usually kidnap people to get what you want, do you?” she asked softly.

Melvin averted his gaze. He’d never really felt comfortable around religious people. He didn’t like being excluded from whatever they had, and he didn’t like the feeling he sometimes got that they knew things they shouldn’t. And Betsy told him all too many stories about religious people using whatever power they had to hurt other people.

He didn’t think Sister Maggie was like that, though.

“Is someone else making you do this?” She got up and immediately leaned against the wall; he half wanted to reach out and steady her. “Is it…is it Fisk, Melvin?”

Now his eyes locked onto hers and he couldn’t look away because it looked like somehow, maybe, impossibly, she wanted to help too. He risked a nod.

“Okay,” she said slowly. “It’s okay. We can figure this out.”

Maybe she really was Murdock’s mother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is basically a Sister Maggie Appreciation Chapter. 
> 
> In other news, have I said recently how much I adore all your comments and kudos? You, dear readers, are the absolute best.
> 
> GUYSGUYSGUYS the Ella series just hit the 400,000 (???!!!???) word milestone! auuuughdklesaejdk thank you so much!


	16. Pulling Captives by the Hand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Captives Come Home" by Run Kid Run (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XZ7gdOwPd8).

Stone

Two knives flashed through the air and sank with two dull _thuds_ in the wall across the room at Fogwell’s Gym. “Nice,” Stone said.

Dex’s eyes were bright as he trotted over to the wall, now studded with weapons, to retrieve various blades. Knives, shuriken, a few pieces of glass that he’d picked up from the broken window behind them, and some kind of tool he’d stolen from Melvin’s shop. Perhaps Stone really shouldn’t be encouraging this behavior, given what he knew of Dex. But it was _fascinating_.

It was possible, though he could only admit it begrudgingly, that Dex had better aim than Stone.

Stone was thinking idly about what would happen when the owner discovered all the holes in the wall when a loud beeping tore through the peaceful atmosphere. Dex spun around. “Is that the alarm? Is that the tracker?” Stone had barely pulled the device out of his pocket before Dex snatched it away. “Potter’s on the move.”

Stone squinted at the tiny screen and its blinking dot. “What’s this mean? Where is he?”

“Not at the shop.” Dex looked up, the light of anticipation in his eyes. “We’ve gotta go find him.”

Stone rapidly weighed the possible dangers of bringing Dex along or leaving Dex alone even as he shot Matty a text to concisely inform him of the situation. Perhaps bringing Dex would help Dex feel that he was part of something bigger. Part of a mission, part of a team. Stone nodded once. “All right. Let’s go.”

Dex’s eyes widened slightly. “Yeah?”

“Follow my lead,” Stone ordered. “You understand?”

Dex shifted immediately into some kind of formal stance, legs apart, shoulders back, head high. It was oddly unnerving. “Whatever you say.”

“We’ll scope out the situation. Don’t act until I tell you.”

The tracker led them to an unobtrusive part of Hell’s Kitchen, and Stone realized their destination while they were still blocks away. It was a location he’d visited before: the law office of Nelson and Murdock, an office that had been all but abandoned recently. Stone shifted his mindset to prepare for an altercation, because if Melvin chose _this_ place, it meant he wanted to deal with Matty’s civilian persona. Well, this was no surprise—this as just the sort of thing civilian personas invited.

Not having such a persona himself, Stone was perfectly situated to assist.

But he stopped Dex, because there was something else. Another heartbeat, another heat signature. Another scent, one he recognized. Melvin had Matty’s mother.

That complicated things. Stone held out his hand to stop Dex. “He has a hostage.”

Perversely, Dex’s eyes lit up even more.

Stone considered his options. He disliked the idea of waiting for Matty, who’d given no indication that he’d even received Stone’s text and Stone didn’t want to speculate as to what Melvin might do in the meantime. He’d have to infiltrate the office without alerting Melvin, lest he harm Maggie.

Though the deli next door was open, Stone didn’t expect Matt, Karen, or the other lawyer to have been careless enough to leave any back doors or windows to the office unlocked. Still, Stone could certainly pick the locks. If he could get into Matty’s office, that should grant him the chance to flank attack Melvin, whose heartbeat betrayed his position in the lobby.

“Cold bore,” Dex whispered, his index finger twitching as if against an imaginary trigger.

“What?”

“You got a gun I could use?”

“No.” But Stone passed him a knife.

Accepting the weapon, Dex gave a longsuffering sigh. “Sure, let’s just make this harder. Which sector you want?”

Stone suddenly felt ill prepared, at least compared to Dex. Not a pleasant feeling. “Sector?”

Dex’s tongue darted out to wet his lips as an icy wall slid across his eyes. “All due respect, but you haven’t done this before. D’you trust me?”

First of all, Stone might not be familiar with the FBI’s formal hostage rescue procedure, but he certainly knew how to disable an enemy to secure assets. Nevertheless, he was curious to see how Dex would handle this self-imposed responsibility. Besides, giving Dex the chance to feel like a leader could go a long way towards securing his loyalty. Doubtful that Dex would be able to recognize the lie, Stone met his gaze. “Yes.”

Sure enough, Dex nodded. “All right, I’ll be your second. Take the right sector, and I’ll take the left. Even if you see our guy in my corner, leave him to me. There might be someone else.”

“There isn’t.”

“There might be _something_ else. We gotta trust each other. Stay in your sector.” He flashed a dark grin. “And keep a tight stack.” Before Stone could question him, he clarified, “Stay close.”

Gritting his teeth, Stone jerked his head to signal that they needed to move. He drew one of his knives, but kept it pressed against his leg. There were plenty of civilians out at this time of evening, but all were blissfully unobservant.

“That’s Nelson and Murdock,” Dex blurted out as they rounded the corner of the pharmacy across the street from the law office.

Stone just shrugged and kept going, making his way down the sidewalk, keeping his head forward but his ears focused on the office.

Dex was right behind him. “Murdock’s Daredevil,” he whispered.

“Very good,” Stone murmured absently, sidestepping a pedestrian. A young man who smelled of a motel and nervousness. A tourist, first time in New York? Stone hoped he made himself scarce in case the imminent conflict spread.

“Potter doesn’t know, does he? Think he’s waiting for Daredevil or the lawyer?”

“Either way, he’ll be disappointed to see us.” Crossing the street, Stone slipped up behind the window to the office that smelled like Matty. Odds were good that Matty wouldn’t stand for any creaking, not if he ever needed to get in and out via the window. Sure enough, once unlocked, it swung open smoothly and silently.

Only when they were inside did Stone realize that the conversation he could overhear wasn’t exactly antagonistic. Then again, from what Stone understood, Maggie was excellent at deescalating situations. That didn’t mean she wasn’t still in real danger.

Dex crept to the doorway, arm already cocked to throw the knife.

“No killing,” Stone blurted out in a whisper.

Dex looked back, one eyebrow raised.

“No killing.”

Dex mouthed a question, _Why?_ , which Stone ignored, as he wasn’t entirely sure of the answer. Besides, he heard another heartbeat approaching, fast and familiar. Excellent. Matty could explain it himself if he wanted to.

Clearly peeved, Dex jerked open the door and stepped into the lobby. Two heartrates spiked as Stone followed. Maggie sat in a chair with her hands wrapped around a mug of tea; Melvin stood over her, eyes flying wide in shock.

Dex immediately let his knife fly.

“Stay down!” Melvin yelled, shoving Maggie from the chair as he ducked. The knife stuck in his shoulder, tearing a scream from his lungs as Maggie crashed into the small table next to her, and both she and the table collapsed in a heap. With his good arm, Melvin pulled a sawblade from behind his back, launching it at Stone and Dex.

A black blur raced into the room from another office, hurling himself into the air and somehow batting at the flat part of the blade to knock it to the ground. Stone grinned. He’d missed this.

And with Matty’s instructions about not letting the enemy realize that death wasn’t the goal ringing in his ears, Stone threw his knife, catching Melvin’s leg and dropping him to the floor. Shoulder-rolling forward, Stone pined Melvin with his knee and pressed his second knife to Melvin’s throat.

Melvin froze.

Stone quickly glanced up to survey the scene. Matty was picking himself up off the floor, his black mask obscuring his expression as he ran his hands over the sawblade. Dex hunched over Maggie, helping her upright. She was drenched in tea and bleeding from her hands and forehead.

Nothing compared to how much Melvin was bleeding, but still. What a mess.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Melvin moaned, the knife riding against his throat as his Adam’s apple bobbed.

Sensing Matty slip closer from behind, Stone grabbed Melvin’s chin and tilted it, forcing Melvin to look at him. “Who were you waiting for, then?”

“Mr. Murdock,” Melvin gasped out. “The lawyer. It’s his office, isn’t it? And she’s his mom. I thought—”

Stone twisted the knife, nicking into Melvin’s skin and silencing him. But Dex’s eyes were already widening. So were Maggie’s, though she didn’t deny it. Matty looked vaguely like he’d been hit over the head.

Resigning himself to being the only person in the room with any sense of priorities, Stone kept up the interrogation. “Why do you want to contact Murdock?”

Melvin’s eyes were watering, probably from a combination of pain, fear, and desperation. “Fisk told me to. He’ll hurt Betsy if I don’t. And he’ll send someone else after Murdock, someone worse. I wasn’t—I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. I wasn’t.”

“Explains why the nun is completely uninjured,” Stone snapped.

“I just need to call him,” Melvin burst out, wriggling despite the cut of the knife and reaching desperately for a phone that’d fallen to the floor during the fight.

Well, Stone _hoped_ Matty wasn’t stupid enough to have his civilian phone on him while wearing the mask, but Matty’s stupidity was not exactly infrequent, so he snatched the phone and threw it across the room. (Matty caught it from the air before it could hit something and break.)

“Melvin,” Maggie said, voice only slightly shaky. “I’ll talk to him. I promise. We’ll work together.”

Melvin’s eyes darted around the room, darted between the three people who could easily kill him if they wanted. “You’re just saying that, you’re just—”

“Melvin,” Matty interrupted, voice low and decisive. He crouched beside Stone as if staring Melvin down through his mask. “Here’s what’s going to happen. Stone is going to stitch you up so you can go back to the shop, and you’re going to stay there. Sister Maggie is going to talk to the lawyer about helping Betsy. We’ll keep you updated. In the meantime, you won’t speak to Fisk unless Stone or I are present and can coach you through the conversation. If he comes after you, we will keep you safe. Understand?”

Melvin nodded sloppily.

“Good. But before any of that happens, I need to ask you some questions. First, are you saying that Fisk told you to contact Murdock?”

Melvin hesitated, then shook his head. “N-no, Fisk told me to—to hurt Murdock. Or someone close to him.”

Matty tilted his head. “And you chose the nun. Why?”

“Murdock stayed at her orphanage. They have the same last name. I thought—I thought she might be close to him, but I didn’t wanna hurt her. I thought she could help me get to Murdock, and if I told Fisk I had her, he’d—”

“You told Fisk about her?” Matty’s voice sharpened into something dangerous.

Melvin blinked rapidly, guilt and fear chasing themselves in his eyes. “I told him I thought she might be his mother, because of the name and the orphanage.”

“What else did you tell Fisk?”

“Nothing! I didn’t—”

“What did Fisk say?”

“He just thanked me and hung up, _I’m sorry_.” He sniffed helplessly. “I didn’t mean to.”

No lie in his heartbeat.

Clenching his jaw, Matty sat back. He jerked his head at Stone. “Get him out of here.”

Stone hauled Melvin to his feet, flicking his tongue against his teeth as the scent of copper saturated the air. “Dex, grab me some towels.”

But Dex was gently, gently holding Maggie’s hair out of her face, away from the bloody cut on her forehead. “She’s hurt.”

Matty got up, breathing shallowly, hands forming fists at his side. He opened his mouth…only to close it when Maggie breathed, “ _It’s fine_ ,” too quietly for Dex to hear.

She cleared her throat. “I’ll be all right, Dex.”

He didn’t move. “It’s good to see you again, Sister.”

“Come and visit me at the church. We should talk.”

“If he’ll let me,” Dex mumbled, glaring at Stone over his shoulder.

Rolling his eyes, Stone simply nudged Melvin into one of the upright chairs, withdrawing his miniature suturing kit from his pocket. Not like they could drag Melvin through the streets with two knives sticking out of him.

“Dex,” Matty said warningly. “I’ve got her.”

“I’ll see you again,” Maggie promised as Matty helped her to her feet.

 

Maggie

From her perspective, Stone looked distinctly annoyed as he started stitching up Melvin. Perhaps he felt like it was a waste of suturing thread.

“This way,” Matthew whispered, leading her into his office. There, he tugged off the black mask and pulled out a baggy jacket from one of the drawers of his desk. It was spectacularly rumpled, but at least it obscured his distinct silhouette. So he _could_ plan ahead.

“How do you feel about windows?” he asked.

She eyed his open window. “I’ve snuck out of a few in my time.”

“Really?” He sounded delighted. “Cool, because I don’t need Melvin to see my face.”

“Why wouldn’t Fisk tell him who you are?”

“Machinations,” he answered darkly. Slipping out of the window faster than she could blink, he landed in the dingy alley behind the office, then turned and held out a hand to her.

She didn’t need it, but she didn’t mind.

But he didn’t let go even when she was safely on the ground beside him. Instead, he drew her into an embrace. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“He wasn’t even trying to hurt me. He made me tea."

“Uh, yeah, you're drenched in it.” He pulled back as if looking at her, though that was obviously not the case. “You wanna go back to my place? Or to the church?”

His apartment was tempting. It would be cool, and quiet, and she would have all his attention without having to give any of her attention to anyone else.

“The church,” she decided.

He kept his hands on her shoulders. “You sure?”

No. She nodded.

He lowered his voice. “Mom. I can hear your heartbeat.”

“I promised Simon I’d see him tonight, and…and I’m supposed to help with dishes…” It was too big a task already, she couldn’t leave Sister Claudia to handle it all on her own.

“Let someone else take care of it.”

“Matthew, please.”

He rubbed his hands reluctantly down her arms. “All right. If that’s what you want.”

She nodded again.

But he refused to consider walking to the church, instead hailing a cab and helping her into it, paying the cabbie extra to keep his mouth shut about her injuries.

As soon as they reached the church, she felt some of the tension trapped in her chest eek away. She was home. Matthew guided her down to the basement, deftly avoiding anyone who would see her and worry about the blood.

It was kind, but she could take care of herself, and he really should be more worried about his own problems right now. “I’m okay,” she said as he steered her towards the bed. “I’m not—”

“Your throat is swollen, you’re bleeding, and your finger’s sprained,” he cut in flatly, reaching for her face. “You’re not okay.”

She hadn’t even noticed the sprain. Ducking, she batted his hand away. “You of all people—”

But his fingers curled over her wrist. “Mom.” Slowly, he lowered her hand back to her side and sat her down on the edge of the bed. “Can I trust you to sit still and let me help you?”

“Hypocrite.”

“Well, I’m Catholic. Don’t move.” He turned around to fetch the first aid kit, moving effortlessly through the basement, passing silently under the shifting lights of the stained glass.

She got up to get herself a glass of water. Partly because she was thirsty, partly to prove a point.

“Mom,” he called in exasperation, his back to her.

Ignoring him, she filled up a glass and returned to the bed. He pulled up a chair to sit in front of her, frustration and fondness warring on his face. “Now you know what it’s like,” she said primly.

“Yeah, no, this isn’t about me.” With the utmost care, he pushed her hair back from her face to sterilize the cut on her forehead.

She gritted her teeth at the sting. “How’s Dex doing?”

“Could you maybe, just as an experiment, worry about yourself for five seconds?” He got out a needle and sutures.

“How hard do you think it will be to help Betsy?”

“ _Mom_.”

“I’m just asking.” She hissed in a breath as the needle punctured her skin on her forehead. It was ridiculous that he regularly endured this without medication and without complaint. If she weren’t well aware of the necessity of picking battles when dealing with Matthew Murdock….

Matthew sighed. “I can’t promise she’ll get her job back as a parole officer, and I’ll have to see what they’re actually charging her with and figure out what she’s told the police already, but I’m thinking they don’t have much to go on. I don’t think they can prove that she actually helped Melvin, just that she had reason to think he was engaging in criminal activity.”

“If they don’t have much, why are they bothering with her?”

His voice hardened, though his hands remained impossibly gentle as he worked. “More of Fisk’s games. The FBI captured Melvin before we put Fisk away for the second time, but Fisk arranged for him to be let out. Because Fisk knows exactly how to manipulate him.”

Through Betsy, of course. Maggie bit her lip; when she’d first started lecturing Matthew on the foolishness of keeping himself away from friends, she hadn’t realized how often the worldview imposed by his mentor was proven right.

Matthew shrugged. “Then again, my promise to protect Betsy is what convinced Melvin to make the suit for me.” He glanced up to smirk at her. “You know, the suit you and the other nuns destroyed?”

“We had to cut you out of it,” she protested.

“It had zippers.”

“Hidden zippers. We weren’t about to go poking around when we didn’t know what kind of injuries you’d sustained. Besides, it’s a good thing we didn’t leave it lying around the church when the FBI showed up looking for you.” With that, she firmly shifted the conversation. “If the man who made your suit has been out of custody all this time, how come he hasn’t made you a new one?”

Matt tied off the stitches. “Maybe you somehow missed the fact that Melvin and I aren’t exactly best friends right now. Do you have a concussion I don’t know about it?”

“You’re saying you can’t hear my brain bruising?”

He just flashed her a tired smile and turned her hand over, wiping away the blood and tying a splint to her fingers with more care than he ever used on himself. Then he took a deep breath, chest inflating, and she braced herself to hear something she wouldn’t like. “Mom,” he began. “You know that Fisk was behind this. He’s not going to stop.”

“No,” she agreed neutrally. “I don’t imagine he will.”

“And Melvin told him who you are. I’ve…I’ve made you a target.”

“You’re worth it,” she said immediately, knowing he would hear the truth in her heartbeat.

He paused to acknowledge this. Then, to her surprise, he dropped his gaze away from her. “I’d like you to go somewhere safe. Not here.”

There it was. She was already shaking her head. “This is my calling.”

“It’s also the easiest place on earth to find you.”

“God will protect me." She raised her eyebrows. "Through Dex, apparently.”

“Are you really gonna endanger everyone else here like that?”

A flash of guilt, of second-guessing. “That’s a much better argument,” she admitted.

“Is it working?”

She searched his face. “How capable do you think Fisk is of another attack?”

The strategic thing for him to do, of course, would be to inflate Fisk’s resources, and it wasn’t as if she could tell the difference between a lie and the truth. Matthew’s lips tightened in frustration. “I don’t know. He’s…cut off from the connections he used to have. And…and I don’t think Melvin will help him again. Especially once we get Betsy safe.”

She touched his cheek lightly in thanks. “Then I’m staying here.”

He sighed, but he was smiling softly. “I figured you’d say that.”

Regardless, it was ridiculous that he was so concerned about her right now. “Matthew, Fisk told the police who you are. And apparently they believed him.”

“Hard to argue with the evidence,” he murmured. “Just because Foggy was able to keep it out of court doesn’t mean the officers weren’t able to watch the video and draw their own conclusions.”

“Does that not bother you?” she asked incredulously.

“’Course it does. It, um…” He clenched his jaw. “It’ll change things. Especially if they go to the Bar. But that’s really not a problem at the moment.”

If only she could hear _his_ heartbeat. She studied his face in the dim light. “You sure?”

“What am I supposed to do about it right now?”

“Frankly, showing some concern would be nice.”

His lips curved upwards, but his forehead creased. “All right. I’m concerned. Satisfied?”

“No.”

“Of course you're not.” His nose wrinkled. “But…thank you for caring.”

“Well, one of us has to.”

His cheeks moved in a forced smile that lasted barely a second. He opened his mouth only to close it. He turned his attention to the cuts on her hands, using tweezers to dig out the splinters from the table she’d broken.

It hurt, but she cherished this closeness to him.

“Mom?” he asked suddenly.

The bed creaked beneath her as she leaned slightly towards him. “Yes?”

Sitting back, he maintained the distance between them. “I’ve—I’ve been wondering something,” he said, stammering slightly. “About Dad.”

The usual swirl of emotions washed over her as she braced herself. “What do you want to know?”

“How did he, um…how did he react when you left?”

“He let me go,” Maggie said, but she felt wary—like she was walking on ice.

“No, I know. I mean…” Matthew swallowed, lifting his eyes towards the ceiling. “I’m trying to imagine what it would be like if, uh…” He smiled joylessly. “From what I understand, postpartum depression isn’t all that uncommon, really, and I…I just want to know if…” He stopped.

"If it comes to it," Maggie said slowly, "Karen will have a lot more resources than I ever did."

Now he dropped his gaze down. “I know. But I heard the story from Father Lantom. He didn’t want to say anything against you other than…other than what he had to. But he didn’t know Dad at all, did he?”

“Not really, no.”

“So he wouldn’t be able to tell me if…if…” He let out a frustrated breath. “Look, I know you wanted to go back to the church because that’s your calling, I get that, but I can’t help but wonder if…if maybe if Dad should’ve—could’ve done something different.”

“Oh, no,” she breathed. “Matthew, he wasn’t perfect, but he was _not_ why I left.”

“But maybe he’s part of the reason you didn’t stay.”

She kept back the words that rushed to her lips and took a moment to study him, taking note of how his eyes were fixed on the floor, on the way the fingers of his right hand fidgeted together. “Jack loved me, Matthew. He showed it every day, in so many little ways. But…” She sighed. “This might not make sense to you, given how you see the world, but I’ve always thought of depression as a blindfold. It keeps you from seeing what’s actually true. I couldn’t see Jack’s love anymore. And at its worst, depression just…it twists everything around. So when Jack was patient with me, I saw indifference. When he was afraid for me, I thought he was angry with me. So I can’t think of anything he could’ve done that I would have trusted.”

“But why…” Matthew pressed his lips into a line for an instant. “Why didn’t he _follow_ you?”

She’d thought of that. Before Jack passed, she’d wondered if he’d show up at the church with their son and haul her secret out into the open. “I don’t know. But I think…I think he was hoping that I would come back on my own.”

“Was…” Matthew cut himself off. He looked brittle, like the wrong word would shatter him. “Was that even a possibility?”

The guilt settled deep in her chest. “Only on my strongest days.”

His head lowered with a nod that was almost imperceptible. “Ah,” he said faintly.

She hated the silence that stretched between them. “It’s always been hard for me,” she began, unsure if she was giving an excuse or an explanation. “Confronting my own failures, walking back into my own weakness. Apologies don’t come easily to me.” And he knew that better than anyone. “Confession is, I think, my least favorite sacrament. So seeing you again, or seeing _Jack_ , after all the ways I hurt you…” She briefly closed her eyes. “That’s not an experience I would’ve sought out. Not willingly.”

“I understand.”

She _hated_ when he said that—because it broke her heart that it was true. “It’s nothing but pride and fear. Two things I pray that God will take away. But so far, He hasn’t.” She ignored the vehement shake of his head. "It's true, and the older I get, the more I see how I fall short. But when I stop focusing on myself for two seconds, I’m actually able to find some peace in that.”

He looked doubtful. “Peace in…thinking you’re not brave?”

She smiled softly and wished for the thousandth time that he could see it. “Peace in repeated failure. If God wanted, couldn’t He make me as brave and selfless now as I’m meant to be in the future? So there must be a reason why He doesn’t.”

“To humble us,” Matthew said promptly.

She was starting to think it was a bit more complicated than that. “Well, yes, but also to drive us towards relationships—with God and the people we love. But reaching for relationship in the middle of weakness is…” She trailed off. She didn’t need to tell him how hard, how frightening, how _vulnerable_ it felt to ask for help in those moments.

But sometimes she thought about how much mercy Matthew showed her each day and had to catch her breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I had to split this chapter into two because it's impossible for Matt and Maggie to have a single conversation without going down a thousand emotionally-charged rabbit trails. Smh.


	17. Ubi Caritas et Amor, Deus Ibi Est

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Ubi Caritas" which I'm assuming is really old but this version sounds cool and is covered by Audrey Assad (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_Pp0jKn1zQ).

Dex

“She’s his _mother?_ ”

“Don’t worry about it,” Stone said crisply, ignoring Melvin’s whimper as he unceremoniously pulled out the knife stuck in his shoulder and started stitching.

Dex blinked. Blinked again. Made no sense. She was a nun. Nuns weren’t supposed to…do that.

And she’d _talked_ to him, tried to help him. That’s what she said she was doing, anyway. But if she was Murdock’s mother, and Murdock was Daredevil, and Daredevil hated Dex…he didn’t think Sister Maggie hated him. (And he didn’t think he could hate her, no matter how much he wanted to right now.)

Running a hand roughly through his hair, he started pacing. This was impossible. The stupidest thing he’d ever heard. Was his life a soap opera now? Really?

“Dex,” Stone warned. “Calm down.”

It was obvious why she hadn’t told him. But the thought of Daredevil and Sister Maggie getting together and, what, _laughing_ at him, laughing at how twisted and broken he was, like he was this unfixable thing….

Except Sister Maggie hadn’t thought he was unfixable, had she? She didn’t accept him the way he was, she wouldn’t let him just be himself. That meant she at least thought he could change. Right? And she showed him more patience, kindness, compassion, and _love_ than he’d felt with anyone since…since Julie.

She probably cared more than Vanessa ever did, even though Vanessa gave him freedom.

Love or freedom? He wasn’t sure which he needed more. Why couldn’t love accept him as he was?

He was going crazy. Crazier. Drowning in deep water and maybe he was swimming towards the surface or maybe he’d gotten completely turned around.

Suddenly, Stone’s hand was on Dex’s wrist, fingers like steel digging into the tendons of Dex’s wrist until Dex’s hand sprang open, dropping the shard of Sister Maggie’s broken teacup that he hadn’t realized he’d picked up.

“Calm down,” Stone repeated. “Take deep breaths.”

That didn’t help, that never helped, that was all people ever said and it never helped.

“Sit down,” Stone ordered.

Dex did not want to sit down. He needed to _move_. But Stone’s tone was sharp and somehow Dex didn’t feel safe arguing.

He sat down in the nearest chair.

Stone hovered over him for a second, like he didn’t trust that Dex wouldn’t spontaneously explode or something. Eventually, something must’ve satisfied him (or maybe he gave up, maybe he didn’t care anymore) because he went back to Melvin to start on the second knife. Melvin made quiet, pained sounds throughout the stitching.

Those sounds were not helping Dex concentrate.

Finally, Stone sat back and started cleaning off the knives.

But Melvin turned around in his chair, wincing at the movement, to stare at Dex. No, glare. He was glaring. “You were with him.”

Dex stood up at the accusing edge to his voice. “Excuse me?”

“Sit down,” Stone muttered.

Dex ignored him.

So did Melvin. “You were with Fisk. You were, you’re the…you were with the FBI. I made the suit for you.”

Dex looked to Stone for help, but Stone just kept cleaning the knives.

Melvin slid unsteadily to his feet. “You used that suit to hurt people.”

Screams echoed in Dex’s head. He smelled sweat and latex and newspapers, saw the lights flicker out in the Bulletin’s office.

“You were with the government,” Melvin said. “You had a _badge_. You’re supposed to _help_ people. You were supposed to—”

“Shut up,” Dex hissed.

“People _died_ because of you." He raised his voice at Stone. "You know that? You know what he did?"

“Shut up!” Dex pushed his hand through his hair only to find it sticky with sweat. Melvin was a bad guy, a convict, Dex _knew_ that, so if _Melvin_ thought he’d gone too far…it was too much. His heart was pounding, head was spinning as an alien feeling sank into his gut. What was that feeling? He hated it. He stared from Melvin to Stone and back. What was he even _doing_ here?

Melvin opened his mouth to say something else, to make everything worse, but instead his phone started buzzing, and somehow Dex knew it was Fisk. Melvin reached to answer it and Stone reached to stop him and Dex forgot where he was.

Blood in his mouth. Red lenses over his eyes. Car exhaust. Garbage from the alley.

He was sliding into the passenger seat of Ray’s vehicle, shaking and gagging on the smell of blood, and Fisk was gonna be furious and disappointed because Karen Page was still alive, and his head _hurt_ , his whole body hurt from falling off the railing. But maybe Daredevil was dead or dying, maybe he’d accomplished at least that much, but Karen Page wasn’t dead and she was the person Fisk sent him to kill. He’d _failed_.

“Dex,” someone said. Not Fisk, not Ray.

He bared his teeth. “It’s not done!” They couldn’t call Fisk, he couldn’t talk to Fisk yet or he’d have to admit how he’d failed, but he could fix this if he just kept going. He wasn’t done. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t _breathe_.

“Dex!” Hands were on his shoulders. Someone was shaking him.

Dex reacted instinctively, jerking free and swinging his fist at the attacker. When a hand locked around his wrist, familiar and terrifying, he grabbed for his batons. But they weren’t strapped to the holster on his leg, _there was no holster on his leg_.

He was completely unarmed.

He headbutted his attacker and someone swore loudly in his ear. A sharp weight forced Dex down to the floor. Rough carpet that didn’t match at all with anything else. He blinked and blinked and blinked until a thin face framed by black hair swam into view.

Stone’s jaw was red where Dex hit him. “Tell me where you are,” he was saying, his knee pressed against Dex's back between his shoulders.

“Office,” Dex’s mouth answered while his brain caught up. His head ached.

“Who am I?”

His name was Stone. Dex knew that. He didn’t really know anything else, which hadn’t bothered him before but was suddenly one more thing to heighten the panic wrapping around his chest.

“Who am I?” Stone repeated.

“Stone.”

“Deep breaths. Good.” Stone slowly edged off him. “We need to leave.”

Dex hadn’t realized he’d started breathing more steadily until Stone said that. His hands were no longer shaking as much, either. Rolling over, he pushed himself off the gross carpet, trying to wipe off whatever germs he’d collected as Stone led him and Melvin to the nearest open window.

It was just a flashback. Not real. He was here and Fisk was locked up and he didn’t have to care what Melvin thought. Melvin was a criminal.

But Dex’s stomach churned with sickly, unfamiliar guilt as he followed Stone.

 

Ella

She didn’t start it.

But school was almost over and lots of the kids were too excited and Jake who had more money started talking about all the fancy vacations he was gonna go on, and Hunter, whose dad just lost his job, punched him to get him to shut up.

Well, Ella didn’t really wanna hear about all those fancy vacations either, but punching him was not the right thing to do.

Joining the fight was also not the right thing to do, she thought…until the fight didn’t stop. One of Jake’s friends jumped in and all of a sudden Hunter was on the ground, but Jake and his friend weren’t stopping.

So Ella snuck up behind them and kicked them both really hard in their butts, which was _not_ a target Matt would be proud of, but Matt was really insistent that she shouldn’t kick out people’s knees unless they were really bad guys.

The two boys whirled around and things went downhill from there.

Ten minutes later, she was stuck at the principal’s office with cotton sopping up her bloody nose, kicking her feet against the chair while she waited for someone to pick her up. Twenty minutes later, Maeva was driving her to see Miss Esther even though they didn’t technically have an appointment.

“It’s not that big of deal,” Ella mumbled. Her nose still felt clogged.

Maeva glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “I think you actually believe that, and _that’s_ why you’re gonna see Miss Esther.”

Ella kept her mouth shut after that.

“I guess you don’t think a black eye and a bloody nose are a big deal either,” Maeva commented.

But they _weren’t_. Matt got hurt worse all the time and it barely got to him at all. She’d feel like a wimp if a tiny bruise and a bit of blood—blood that _wouldn’t_ keep coming because she _wasn’t_ like Kyle—made her upset.

It worried the nurse, though. The nurse thought she had a concussion because she didn’t care about the injuries. In the future, Ella decided to act a more upset, maybe cry a little.

She kept that plan to herself.

In her office, Miss Esther got straight to the point, asking Ella what happened. Once she heard the story, she said what she _always_ said: “Getting into fights doesn’t really help people, Ella.”

Well, they’d have to agree to disagree on that.

Miss Esther must’ve read Ella’s thoughts on her face because she smiled a little. “Let’s try something different. Let’s think of all the ways you can help people _without_ getting into fights.”

So they made a list of things she could do. Say nice things, give people presents, do nice things for them. It was fun, but, still, there was a big difference between giving Hunter a card and stopping people from beating him up.

“How’s your friend Matt?” Miss Esther asked while they worked.

Ella talked about him enough that Miss Esther started asking about him on her own. Ella was always careful not to be too specific about how Matt was doing—she _definitely_ learned that lesson after she told Micah about her nightmares and Matt ended up having to stop being a lawyer for a while. But she talked with Miss Esther about him anyway because Miss Esther helped Ella understand more about why Matt was…Matt.

(Matt said he had a therapist now, too. Ella hoped his therapist was helping him understand himself.)

“He’s anxious,” Ella reported.

“Really?”

But Ella wasn’t supposed to talk about the reasons why, right? It was all secret or mostly secret. So she just shrugged and added another idea— _calling Daredevil_ —to their list. Miss Esther was eyeing the addition skeptically, so Ella hurried to change the subject. “I have a new friend. He’s a teenager.”

“You’re friends with a teenager?” Miss Esther still sounded skeptical.

“He helps my family.” That was pretty much the truth. Maybe Peter was anxious too. “But I think he probably needs help, like Matt.”

“Why do you think that?”

Why _did_ she think that? She hummed. “Because he doesn’t seem like a normal teenager?”

Miss Esther laughed. “I’m not sure there’s any such thing. What’s so different about him?”

Obviously, he was Spiderman. But she couldn’t _say_ that. She tried to figure out how to translate it into normal-person words. “He does too much. He worries too much. He can’t just have fun like he should.”

“Well, teenagers are busy. And they’re usually stressed.”

“Could you help me think of ways to get him to tell me what’s going on?”

Miss Esther raised her eyebrows behind her glasses. “If something _is_ going on, he probably doesn’t need to tell you about it.”

“Maybe he _wants_ to tell me about it.”

Miss Esther winked knowingly. “Or maybe you just want to know about it because you like knowing things about people.”

Crossing her arms, Ella thumped the back of her heel against the chair and deliberately did not pout. “I want to help him.”

“I’m sure you do, but there are lots of ways to help people even without knowing every little thing about their lives.”

“ _You_ keep trying to know everything about me so you can help.”

“Because it’s my job,” she explained dryly. “And I went through lots of training. And you and I are sitting here in an environment where we’re supposed to talk to each other and try to solve problems. But if I’m just having dinner with a friend, and something’s wrong, I don’t try to solve their problems unless they ask me to.” Her mouth quirked. “Sometimes it’s hard keeping my mouth shut, but I try to just listen.”

“What if they stop talking?”

“You can always ask questions to show that you’re listening, and to show you care.” Miss Esther leaned forward with her hands clasped between her knees. “Do you wanna try with me?”

Ella nodded and cleared her throat. “Are you doing okay?” She lowered her voice. “Like that?”

Miss Esther was smiling, but her voice was serious. “Well, that was a really good start. But if someone’s really upset, what do you think will happen if you ask something like that? Do you think they’ll tell you all the ways they’re not okay?”

No, probably not.

“Specific questions usually help people figure out what to talk about. So if you already kind of know what’s wrong, you can start there. And if you don’t, you can ask about different parts of their life until they tell you what’s wrong, or you could ask about how they’re feeling, like if they feel worried about anything or if they’re angry.”

“Lemme try.” Ella narrowed her eyes at Miss Esther. “Is your family okay?”

“Good question!” she praised her. Then she sat up straighter than usual and crossed her legs and spoke in a higher voice. “My family’s not doing great, Ella. It’s really hard right now.”

Stifling a giggle, Ella thought about why a family might not be doing okay. “Because your parents are getting divorced?” she guessed.

Miss Esther snapped out of her pretend voice. “Can I give you two tips that’ll help people open up to you more?” She leaned forward. “First, that question you just asked me is called closed-ended. That means that the other person can answer it with only a yes or a no. Plus, if you guess wrong, the other person might feel like you’re not really listening.”

“Oh.”

“You’re doing a great job,” she said encouragingly. “It takes practice to ask specific questions that are still open-ended. But you’ll get the hang of it. In the meantime, there’s just one other thing I wanna show you. I’m gonna ask you a question, but I’m gonna ask it a bunch of different ways and I want you to tell me how it makes you feel.”

Curious, Ella scooted forward a bit in her chair.

Miss Esther scooted forward in her chair too and narrowed her eyes at Ella. “How’re you doing? How’s your family?” But she asked it like was shooting the words out of a machine gun. Then she reached for her notepad, apparently studying it, only to ask, “How are you doing? How’s your family?” in a bored voice. Then she bit her lip and stared at the floor and twisted her hands together, sounding nervous when she asked the questions. Finally, she sat normally and calmly met Ella’s eyes and asked, “How are you doing? How’s your family?” in a soft, level voice.

“Oh,” Ella said dumbly.

“Even though I asked the exact same thing, the _way_ I asked it matters. So when you’re talking to someone and asking them questions, think about what your body and voice are telling them.” She lowered her voice like she was telling a secret. “You’re really enthusiastic, Ella, and sometimes it can be…intense.”

She couldn’t wait to try all this with Peter. And Matt, too. And maybe Stone! Stone _definitely_ needed more people to talk to. “I’ll work on it,” she promised.

Miss Esther reached out and grabbed her hand. “Hey, Ella?”

“Yeah?”

“Remember, you might have to take it slow. Especially if you’re talking to someone who has trauma.”

She cocked her head. “Trauma?”

“We all have trauma. Everyone has little trauma—smaller things that happen that are mean or sad or scary. Like when someone at school bullies you, or when someone you trust yells at you.”

None of the people she trusted yelled at her anymore. Elizabeth still yelled, sometimes, when Ella saw her. But Ella didn’t trust Elizabeth as a mom, not now that she knew what moms were supposed to be like. Moms were supposed to be like Maeva.

“ _Big_ trauma, though, is really big things that take a lot longer to recover from. Like what happened to your dad,” she said, gently but matter-of-factly. “But it’s also true that lots of little trauma over a lot of time can add up to become big trauma.”

Ella bit her lip. “Matt has a lot of trauma, doesn’t he?”

“From what you’ve told me,” Miss Esther said sadly, “it sure sounds like it.”

“But how can I help?”

“You won’t be able to take the trauma away, but you can make sure he knows you love him. You can try to make him laugh. And you can try really hard to understand that sometimes trauma makes people behave differently, and you can be okay with that even if it’s frustrating. You know what that’s called?”

“What?”

“That’s called being patient.”

Ella frowned. She was not patient. But maybe she could be.

 

Matt

Maggie eventually left him to change into clothing that wasn’t covered in spilled tea so she could help with dinner for the kids in the orphanage. He wasn’t disappointed; there was something special about listening to her serve people. And somehow…seeing how she poured herself into the work now made it a bit easier to appreciate all the things she’d done for him when he was a kid. She hadn’t told him who she was, sure, but none of the kids she helped were just a job to her. Made it easier to convince himself that he hadn’t been, either.

The kids were loud, even in another building. Yelling at each other, scraping their tables back. If he were anywhere else, he’d probably find it annoying. Instead, it just felt like…not home, exactly, home was lying on the carpet reading while Jack listened to the radio. But it wasn’t bad.

He rolled his left shoulder experimentally as he climbed the stairs from the basement, pulling the hood of his jacket up over his head as he went. It’d been six weeks since the injury (which meant his kid was, what, twelve weeks old?) and the arm was finally, definitely healed. Fighting with Stone, even for an instant, had felt pretty good, although he wished their opponent hadn’t been Melvin. According to Maggie, they probably could’ve talked Melvin down without resorting to violence. But he couldn’t hep feeling thankful that Stone hadn’t taken any chances with her safety.

Suddenly, Matt tilted his head. He heard Father Driscoll leaving the orphanage and returning to the main church. Impulsively, Matt moved to intercept him, keeping his head down, wishing he had his sunglasses. “Uh, Father? Do you have a moment?”

“How can I help, Matthew?”

Well, Matt hadn’t quite given himself enough time to figure out how to say it. “Confession? Or…more like advice, maybe.” Or just listening without judgment.

“We can sit in my office, if you want,” Driscoll suggested. “It’s private, and less formal than a confessional.”

Matt couldn’t help appreciating that Father Driscoll didn’t suggest they sit in the kitchen with lattes. Driscoll wasn’t Lantom and they both knew it. And he knew he’d definitely appreciate the privacy, if this conversation went where he expected (hoped, maybe) it might go.

Besides, Driscoll’s office was quieter. The kitchen echoed, but here there were thick, insulating walls that, for anyone else, would’ve shielded the room from the chaos of the outside world. Even for Matt, they softened things. He settled into a worn chair with oversized cushions that smelled like books and coffee and lots of different people. More than one person had cried in this chair. Driscoll sat not behind his desk but in a matching chair next to Matt, leaning against the arm rest. Waiting.

“I’m not sure what to call it, exactly,” Matt began. “But I have this, uh, problem. For years now, ever since…” He shifted in his seat. “After I lost my dad, this guy showed up.”

“Tell me about him.”

“Really, I’d rather not.” When Driscoll didn’t push, Matt kept going. “But he taught me that I’d have to push people away. Especially people that I care about. To…to be effective. And he set a pretty powerful example.” Matt picked at a loose thread in the chair. “I tried to not to follow it. But I keep screwing up.”

“How?”

Matt hid his hands in his pockets. “Every time something goes wrong, I…all I can think of is what’ll happen to the people I care about if I don’t stop it. Fix it.” He twisted his mouth sardonically. “The thing is, I’m good at fixing things. Usually.” Sometimes. “I have these…certain abilities and…you could call it training, I guess. The people I care about don’t have any of that, so I can’t…I can’t expect them to do the things I do.”

“That sounds reasonable,” Driscoll said evenly.

Well, that was nice to hear. “But there’re usually other ways to solve the problems. Ways that would allow my friends to help. Or—or to at least be involved. When I handle it myself, they’re sidelined.” He raised his eyebrows. “Which, to me, means they’re safe. To them, it means…I don’t know. They worry. And…and I guess they find it insulting,” he added something more like a mumble.

“That also sounds reasonable.”

“I _know_. And the last thing I want to do is hurt them. Keep hurting them. But that’s exactly what I do.”

“Have you talked to them about it? To Karen and…your partner, Franklin?”

“Foggy,” Matt corrected. “And yes. We’re…working on it, I guess.”

Driscoll nodded slowly. “It sounds like you’re moving in the right direction. If you really want to confess, we could talk about the pride and fear that probably lie at the root of what you’re talking about. But…are you sure you can’t tell me more about the person who told you these things?”

Matt wasn’t actually surprised that Driscoll was coming back to Stick; he obviously thought it was important—and he was right. The problem was that it was far _more_ important than Driscoll could possibly realize. “I had to listen to him, Father. He was training me.”

“Training?”

Matt wet his lips. “To navigate the world without sight. And to, uh…control my other senses.”

“Forgive me, I thought compensation was a myth?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Matt murmured. “I lost my sight in a car accident with a truck carrying…some sort of chemicals. I don’t know what they were. But they…” He clenched his jaw. “They heightened my other senses.”

Driscoll paused before answering. “That sounds like it should be a good thing, but from the look on your face, I’m guessing it’s not?”

“No, it is. It is. It’s just…” He stared up towards the ceiling, jiggling his knee up and down before realizing what he was doing and stopping himself. “It’s complicated.”

“How so?”

If Driscoll couldn’t handle _this_ , he definitely couldn’t handle the rest of Matt’s secrets. “I can tell that you had chicken tacos for lunch, probably from the stand down the block. I can hear the kids outside. Sister Maggie is trying to get them to play soccer in the daylight that’s left, but the ball’s deflated. It’s not really working. And…and I can hear your heart beating faster with everything I’m saying.”

“My heart,” Driscoll said weakly.

“Like I said.” Matt kept his head angled away. Not that he could actually give Driscoll privacy. “It’s complicated.”

Driscoll let out a slow breath. “That might be understating it a bit.” He cleared his throat. “All right. So someone came along to help you cope with all of this?”

Matt couldn’t help sympathizing with how he was trying to get back to relatively solid ground. More than that, though, it was important that Driscoll wasn’t…panicking. Wasn’t accusing him of violating boundaries, wasn’t accusing him of lying. Wasn’t walking away. “Right. That was part of the training.”

“Only part of it?”

“I told you I learned to fight from my…from my dad.” Matt bit his lip, wishing that it would’ve been true and wishing he hadn’t used Jack as a cover for Stick. It felt wrong. “I didn’t. I’m sorry I lied, but I didn’t know how else to explain.”

“But you do know how to fight?” Driscoll sounded bewildered, but also like he was still stubbornly trying to make sense of things. “What kind of fighting are we talking about?”

Shrugging, Matt smiled lopsidedly. “All kinds, pretty much. With my senses, I can track my enemies even without sight. I can tell when someone’s about to attack and I can tell where I should hit them to do the most damage.”

Driscoll shook his head in a tiny motion. “Enemies. Are you saying you’ve got a lot of those?”

“Father, I…” Matt pressed his lips together for a moment. He pushed his hood back.  “Yes.”

“Ah. Well, then.” Driscoll shifted in his chair, rubbing his hands against his knees. “You already know that I know about what happened with, ah, Kyle Conway.” When Matt didn’t say anything, he kept going. “And I looked into the trial, too. I apologize for the intrusion of privacy, but I thought—”

Matt laughed. “I just told you I can hear your heartbeat, and you’re apologizing for invading _my_ privacy?”

“My decision to look was deliberate,” Driscoll pointed out. “It sounds like what you do is inadvertent.”

Huh. Matt nodded hesitantly.

“As I was saying, I know from the trial that the police suspected…vigilante involvement.”

There.

“And sometimes the nuns, they whisper about him. Daredevil. They won’t tell me anything,” he added wryly, “but I know he’s connected to this church somehow.”

Matt focused on keeping his breathing steady. No need to panic. This was what he’d come for.

“And in a world with Avengers and aliens and magic…well, it kind of makes you reevaluate your assumptions, doesn’t it?”

“What do you want to know, Father?” Matt asked quietly.

For a moment, Driscoll held very still and Matt fought the impulse to avert his gaze under the weight of unseen scrutiny. Then, abruptly, Driscoll sat back. “I don’t.”

“…Excuse me?”

“Sister Maggie, she spoke with me shortly after I came here. About you.”

Matt narrowed his eyes.

“She told me about the connection you had to Father Lantom. She, uh…she said you’d go to him for unusual advice, advice that could only be given in the context of some extraordinary information.”

Where was he going with this?

“She also said that she has that information, and as such thinks she can fill Father Lantom’s footsteps, to some extent. Not that she didn’t want me to be available to you if you decided to reach out, but…”

“What are you saying, Father?”

Driscoll lowered his voice. “I’m saying that, first of all, that I think you do a lot of good. And I certainly want to help you keep doing that good, if I can.”

Something warm settled in Matt's chest. “Thank you."

“Secondly, if your secret is what I think it is, I’m saying that it might be useful to have some people in your life who don’t, ah, hold that information. In fact, it might be useful to have some people who could swear under oath that such information is, according to their limited knowledge, entirely untrue.”

Matt blinked. “Under oath? Father—”

“It seems to me that the State of New York has a vendetta against you, Matthew, but I adhere to higher laws than those. No offense, counselor.” Now Driscoll moved his hand to set it on Matt’s knee. “If you want to tell me the truth about what you do, I’ll listen. But if you think it’s best to leave my suspicions unconfirmed…well, I don’t know what I don’t know, do I?”


	18. Bury You Alive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Watch You Crawl" by Red (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N61SMMcQqJ4).
> 
> WARNING for lots of fluff followed by some pretty gory whump at the end.  
> Everything's gonna be FINE.

Foggy

Foggy only realized he hadn’t checked if the road was clear _after_ he’d already switched lanes. Marci didn’t call him on it, though, so maybe she hadn’t noticed. He was thinking about a thousand things at once, so maybe so was she.

The police knew Matt was Daredevil, and so far it was feeling way too anticlimactic for being one of Foggy’s personal nightmares. A bit of legal kung-fu and Matt was…at least not in custody. And the Bar Association was, so far, conspicuously silent. In the meantime, Foggy redoubled his efforts with their clients, determined that if something did go wrong, he wouldn’t be leaving anyone in the lurch. His newfound fervor was enough to land one settlement over the few days since Matt’s arrest. Settlements were a beautiful thing for defense attorneys if only because subjecting a defendant to the whims of a jury took guts, not to mention a particular kind of faith in humanity that Matt had in spades but Foggy struggled to muster up.

“You okay, Foggy Bear?”

“What?”

Marci sighed. “You’re not listening.”

Foggy didn’t even consider lying to her. “Sorry. Just thinking.”

“About?”

“About a lot of stuff I don’t really wanna talk about.”

“Talk to me about something happier, then.”

How was she so perfect? “So,” he began. “You know the Valliers?”

“I don’t know anything about them except that they’re going to give Matt an aneurysm, which is going to give you an aneurysm. It’s a dangerous chain of codependent dominos.”

“I am not a domino,” Foggy said, affronted. “I’m a chess piece. A knight.”

“But no, I don’t know them, except for talking to them at the reception.”

Right, they’d had a brief conversation at Matt and Karen’s wedding. “You scared Ella.”

“I scare most people,” Marci said unapologetically.

“I just…I realized something when we were at their house a few weeks ago. It was right after Fisk used Matt as his own personal punching bag. I think Micah was telling Matt off about it, but the whole conversation actually seemed to go… _well_.”

“Maybe because you were there.”

Foggy shook his head. “I don’t think it was unusual. I think Micah actually has, like, permission to lecture Matt. And I think Matt responds better to him.”

“Than to you,” Marci finished knowingly.

Foggy focused on driving. “Yeah. Which, I mean, is nice. Knowing someone else is bugging him, and knowing he’s actually listening. Maybe I can be more of a best friend and not a…is there a name for a person whose job it is to stop someone else from being dumb?”

“Foggy Bear, like you’re even capable of not being a mother hen.”

“How dare you,” Foggy said.

She arched an eyebrow.

Five seconds later: “Valid point,” he conceded.

She was, as ever, dignified in her victory. She graciously changed the subject. “Does Matt know we’re doing this?”

“He absolutely does not. I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Not like he won’t find out. Immediately, probably.”

“And if he questions me, I’ll show him exactly why I beat him in mock trial at Colombia.”

“I thought you’re supposed to be the shining example of the one employee at your little firm that isn’t constantly lying,” she remarked.

“This is lying about a _good_ thing, babe. They can’t get mad at me for that.”

She sighed again. “And here I thought you were about to be a little hypocritical,” she said, studying the new ring on her left hand.

So…their wedding hadn’t been super romantic. They were definitely gonna do another one with a ceremony and a reception (mostly a reception). Foggy was just hoping he could keep his mom from finding out that they’d met with a judge until after the real ceremony. But with everything going on with Fisk, it seemed smart to get all the legal stuff taken care of. Specifically: securing privilege.

Also for, like, in case one of them died or something. But they weren’t _talking_ about that, obviously. Bit of a downer conversation for a honeymoon.

Anyway. The wedding had been nice, even though it wasn’t anything like what either of them wanted, but that was okay. The best was still to come.

“You missed the turn,” Marci said.

“Scenic route,” Foggy countered, despite the fact that all the lawns in this grungy neighborhood were overgrown and covered in random yard tools, like the whole neighborhood had set out on some ambitions restoration project and collectively quit after less than twenty-four hours, plus old toys like they’d been owned by kids twenty years ago.

“It’ll take us three minutes longer now.”

“Three minutes enjoying each other’s company in this uniquely aesthetic part of town.”

“Uniquely.”

“Look at that whimsical tire swing, a tire swing we would not have seen if I hadn’t turned this way.” He turned back onto the right street, squinting at the faded addresses.

“Just follow the trail of sunshine and puppy breath, Foggy Bear.”

“Done and done.” He pulled into a driveway in front of a house with weather-stained blue paint. They’d barely stepped out onto the driveway when the front door opened so two fully-grown golden labradoodles streaming out onto the lawn.

“Marci and…Foggy?” a woman asked, coming down the walkway.

Foggy’s eyes fixed on the dogs. “That’s us. Are these the parents?”

“The dad is Snickerdoodle and the mom is Tiramisu,” she explained, dropping a hand on each dog’s head. (They gazed up at her adoringly.) (Foggy cringed at the names.) “We got a litter of six, but one puppy’s already spoken for, so you got five to look at. Wanna come inside?”

At Foggy and Marci’s enthusiastic nods, the woman led them into her house—a bit of an eccentric place, with a weird amount of frog figurines that it seemed prudent to ignore—and into a basement. Foggy felt a smile split across his face at the blast of warm air and the sweet, sweet smell of clean puppies.

And there they were: six frolicking, cream-colored puppies playing on the floor cordoned off by a baby gate. The woman gestured for them to step over the gate; two of the puppies scrambled for cover, but four swarmed closer, tiny tails vibrating with excitement.

Foggy swore under his breath and immediately felt guilty for swearing in front of baby animals. He crouched own and was instantly attacked by the four brave souls who made their impact feel like a small, enthusiastic army.

Marci lowered herself more carefully to the ground, mindful of her skirt and heels, but her normal unimpressed expression was melting away like butter over warm toast.

“They’re too young to leave the mom still,” the woman was saying from where she stood in the doorway. “You can get yours in about two weeks, give or take.” Her eyes turned piercing. “I’d like you to name yours after some kind of dessert, in keeping with tradition, but I can’t force you.”

Foggy exchanged a glance with Marci, who picked up a puppy seemingly at random and said, “Allerheiligenstriezel.”

“Bless you,” Foggy said.

The woman looked horrified.

But Marci hadn’t set down the puppy, which was straining to lick her face, and Foggy had a feeling that they’d found the right dog even if they hadn’t found the right name.

 

Karen

It all started because it was stupid that Matt got to hear the heartbeat and she didn’t. So, naturally, she informed him that she wanted to hear the heartbeat too, albeit through the medium of technology instead of radiation-enhanced ears. Matt was, predictably, convinced that leaving a paper trail of maternity-related medical records for Karen Murdock wasn’t a great idea, all things considered. Karen pointed out that they had access to some secretive clinics, as evidenced by the time when Matt got shot, and Matt insisted that those clinics were for emergencies. So Karen wanted to know why hearing her baby’s heartbeat didn’t qualify as an emergency, at which point Matt wisely gave up and agreed to go to the actual hospital, because if they were gonna do this they were gonna “do it right.”

Now they were in the waiting room at the hospital, side-by-side in chairs that were trying so hard to be uncomfortable that she felt a bit guilty for still hating them, and Matt’s knee was practically vibrating beside her. It would be annoying if it weren’t so cute. “Excited?” she whispered.

He didn’t answer, and it was then that she realized his head was tilting minutely in different directions and his lips were slightly parted.

She nudged his arm. “Matt? Excited?”

His head snapped towards her. “Yeah,” he said quickly. Too quickly. “Definitely.”

She put her hand on his leg, which didn’t slow the vibration at all. “Or…nervous?”

“I’m not nervous.” But a few seconds later, he relented under her disbelieving silence. “I’m just…not a fan of hospitals.”

Okay, and his reluctance to use them for himself made sense; if he wasn’t worried about people asking questions about his very suspicious scarring, then he was worried about his enemies following him and turning the hospital into a war zone. “You’re not even the patient.”

“No, I know, and I’m glad we’re doing this, it’s just…” He adjusted his glasses and shrugged cavalierly. “They’re…loud?”

He offered it almost like a question, like it was only half an answer that he wanted to see if she’d accept before he admitted to anything else. She nodded encouragingly.

“…And they smell terrible,” he admitted. “Like…bodily fluids and antiseptic.”

She shuddered. “I can imagine.”

“And, uh…” He grimaced, at the conversation or something he’d sensed; she wasn’t sure. “And they sort of remind me of when I was in the hospital after the accident, which is…not pleasant.”

She hummed thoughtfully. “Maybe I can distract you?”

He shot her a scandalized look. “Karen, we’re in a _public hospital_.”

She stuttered defensively, the words dying on her tongue under his satisfied smirk. Never mind, she’d get him back later. “I was talking about narrating what’s on the TV over there.” Reaching out, she took his hand, rubbing her thumb over his skin. “Like right now it’s this really tacky commercial for some kind of medication. They’re going overboard with lots of flowers and sunrises, but there’s this list of possible side effects scrolling up the side and it’s all really awful.”

“I don’t know why you think telling me that is helpful.”

“Ooh, it just switched to a commercial for paper towels. Now it’s lots of messy, wholesome family scenes. Like painting and spilling tomato soup. At least, I think it’s tomato soup. It _could_ be blood.”

“Are we talking someone-cut-their-knee blood, or the-ten-year-old-is-a-serial-killer blood?”

“Serial killer,” she concluded thoughtfully. “I’d by those paper towels, by the way, with how much tomato soup you spill everywhere.”

He groaned. “Please don’t turn tomato soup into a code word.”

She was already texting Foggy to inform him of the new euphemism. Then she looked up and a ball of ice dropped into her stomach as she saw Vanessa Fisk’s dead eyes staring back at her from the screen.

Matt nudged her arm. “What is it?”

 _Nothing_ , she was about to say, except he’d insisted not so long ago that they should solve their problems together, and she’d been so proud of him then that she couldn’t bring herself to break their mutual promise now. “There’s just, um…they’re talking about Vanessa. Again.” She sunk lower in her seat. “First Wesley, now Vanessa.”

His eyebrows drew closer together. “Wesley?”

Right, she hadn’t gotten around to telling him what with all the insanity with Stone and Dex and Melvin and the _NYPD_. “Yeah, um, there’ve been all these…you know, articles and reports and stuff. About how he supposedly helped Hell’s Kitchen so much before…” She swallowed, stiffened her voice into something foreign and detached. “Before his as-yet-unsolved murder.” She cleared her throat. “That’s what they’re saying, anyway. And then they started in on Vanessa, and I just…” It was her turn to fidget now, bouncing her leg up and down to try to distract from the twisting feeling in her stomach. “It’s gotta be Fisk, right?”

“It’s just stories,” Matt said hesitantly.

But Fisk knew the answer to the questions the stories were raising. She gritted her teeth; it wasn’t like they could have this discussion _here_.

“Hey.” He tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. “It’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna figure out what he’s up to, and we’re gonna stop it.”

 _How?_ How could you stop someone who was already in maximum security, and who had nothing more to lose, if you refused to kill him?

Answer: you couldn’t.

“Mrs. Murdock?”

Her head snapped up, but it was just a nurse in the doorway, holding a clipboard. The name still made her heart skip, which always turned Matt’s expression insufferably cocky. That was still true, although the cockiness was slightly more subtle than usual given the weight of their conversation. Nice of him to tone it down a bit.

“We’re ready for you,” the nurse went on. She was wearing purple scrubs dotted with smiley-faced balloons that inexplicably managed to make Karen feel a bit better.

The nurse led them to a private room and started running through a couple other tests, promising to save the best for last. Matt hovered like an overgrown moth, and every time the nurse reported good results for whatever test, he flashed a confident smile, like, _Who, me, I’m not nervous_. Karen felt like they’d been there all day before the nurse finally, finally spread cool gel across her stomach. She curled her toes at the weird feeling and squeezed Matt’s hand.

“Here we go,” the nurse murmured, gliding the transducer over the gel. Karen bit her lip. No heartbeat yet.

“Left,” Matt blurted out.

The nurse raised an eyebrow at him, but she moved the wand to the left and a rapid thudding filled the room, and Karen already knew the baby was real, but this felt somehow imminent.

The nurse looked at Karen with eyes that’d witnessed a thousand moments like this and still found each experience magical. “Congratulations, Mom.” She glanced up at Matt. “Congratulations, Dad.”

His face split into the broadest, dopiest smile Karen had ever seen.

As much as Karen disliked the goop on her stomach, she’d happily keep wearing it if it meant getting to hear that heartbeat. Even the nurse seemed almost reluctant to stop the ultrasound, finally cleaning Karen off and wiping all the stuff away. “We’ll get you a copy of the sonogram before you leave,” she promised.

Matt gave the tiniest bounce up on his toes (Karen had to blink to make sure her eyes weren’t deceiving her, but no, that was an actual bounce). “Thank you for this. Thank you _so much_.”

“One of my favorite parts of the job,” the nurse said sweetly. But something about her seemed suddenly…off, maybe? The way her fingers rubbed together nervously didn’t match her expression. Karen glanced at Matt, but he didn’t look like he was picking up on any dangerous signals. Then again, he was kind of distracted right now.

But then the nurse said, “So…you’re the lawyer, aren’t you?” and that definitely got his attention.

Matt took a step back, wrapping his hands tightly around his cane, as Karen swung her legs off the table, reaching for her shoes. “Defense attorney,” he said, curt.

“Matthew Murdock?” she clarified.

“Is there a problem?”

Her eyes widened. “No! No, it’s just, um…” She glanced over her shoulder and leaned closer. Could she _be_ more suspicious? “My brother’s with the NYPD, and he—”

“Thanks, we’re done here.” Matt grabbed Karen’s hand.

“Wait!” she blurted out. “I just wanted to thank you.”

Matt froze halfway to the door.

“Look,” the nurse said, speaking so fast it was hard to make out the words. “I heard about the video and what Fisk’s saying about you, and if that’s true I just wanted to thank you for…doing what you do.”

Matt’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses, but he didn’t say anything.

“And my brother. He, um, he’d thank you too, if he could.” She held her clipboard tightly to her chest. “There’s a lot of cops who’d thank you, actually. I don’t know how this’ll end, but I just…I thought I should tell you that maybe you’ve got some allies you don’t know about.”

 

Matt

He had so much to tell Foggy. About what the nurse said, and the ultrasound, and how Karen’s heartbeat spiked when she finally got to hear the smaller heartbeat. And he wanted Foggy to explain the sonogram to him because Karen did her best, but there was just something about the way Foggy described things. He also wanted to ask why Foggy smelled like weird perfume and… _puppies_. But for now, he was trying to be selfless and responsible as he stood with Foggy in Foggy’s apartment because Peter was making his case.

For the How To Be Friends With A Superhero club.

The name was, apparently, a work in progress.

Peter stood confidently, shoulders back and chin lifted, but he looked way too young to be talking about this stuff, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that, according to Foggy, bore a terrible science pun. His heartbeat betrayed his nervousness; he really wanted this to work. And he was laying out his case so expertly that Matt couldn’t help suspecting that he’d been working on this for at least a few days, maybe even practicing it—it had that slightly rehearsed feel he remembered from his own first few closing arguments.

Peter’s points were good, too. He played up the flattery, talking about how much he’d learned from both Matt and Foggy and explaining that he wanted Ned to be able to learn from them, too. He insisted that Ned wanted to be as supportive as possible, but how it was hard when he was just one kid trying to help Peter with everything and he wasn’t even allowed to know the facts of what Peter was dealing with when Peter wasn’t allowed to talk about Daredevil. He highlighted this by mentioning that Ned was sad they couldn’t hang out in the evenings since Peter was watching over Ella, but he kept the guilt trip subtle. He even managed to talk about role models without sounding like he’d swallowed a psychology article.

“He’s good,” Foggy muttered under his breath.

“So, um,” Peter was concluding, “I promise we won’t be annoying about it. I just think it’d help me and Ned a lot if he was allowed to talk to you guys. I _promise_ you can trust him—he gets the importance of a secret identity, he really does. Uh…so what do you think?”

Just because Matt was already convinced was no reason to roll over easily, especially when he needed to make _absolutely sure_ that Peter understood the gravity of the situation. “Do you realize how many people already know my identity?”

“And that’s the thing, they all know each other, right?” Peter kept his voice innocent and curious even as he twisted Matt’s point around. “So they can, like, get together and commiserate.”

Matt scoffed. “Commiserate over what, exactly?”

“You,” Foggy and Peter said at the same time.

Matt didn’t dignify that with a response. “But it’s not just me you’re risking with this plan. You’re putting Ned in danger.”

“I feel like Ned’ll be _safer_ the more involved he is with you and me, actually. We’re pretty good at keeping people safe, you know?”

“If someone targets Ned or Foggy,” Matt said slowly, clearly, “it won’t be that easy. You remember when Dex shot Foggy? Here, in this apartment? The only reason he was okay was because you and Stone _happened_ to be there. But Dex set it up so _I_ wouldn’t be there, which is exactly what someone like him will do to Ned.”

Peter crossed his arms over his chest. “I just don’t get why someone’s more likely to target him just because he knows you guys.”

Before Matt could explain, Foggy stepped in. “Fisk already knows Matt’s identity, Peter. Which means anyone seen hanging out with Matt is someone who could end up on Fisk’s radar. And…because Matt and I are partners, anyone I hang out with could arguably end up on some list, too.”

Matt made a conscious effort to keep his surprise off his face. He hadn’t realized Foggy thought that way at all. Hearing his own fears echoed back was simultaneously validating and unnerving.

“But Ned’s _completely alone_ in this right now,” Peter insisted. “It’s not fair.”

Matt could still remember Foggy’s palpable tension in the days when he’d been alone in keeping Matt’s secret. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I know. We’ll do it.”

Peter straightened up. “What? You will?”

“We decided before you came over,” Foggy admitted.

“Then what was all that about?” Peter exploded. “You made me give a speech and everything!”

“A very good speech,” Foggy encouraged him. “But we were trying to drive home the point of how serious this is one more time.”

“I’m not stupid.”

“I know,” Matt said immediately. “But I also know what you’d feel like if something happened to Ned because you let him get too close to…all of this. Because that’s how I’d feel if something happened to Foggy because of what I do.”

If. When.

That was when Matt heard it. The _click_ that could only mean one thing. He lunged for Peter, not making any calculations, just knowing that Peter was a kid and in danger. But Peter jerked to the side even before Matt crashed into him, grabbing onto Foggy, and they all went down in a pile just a _bang_ exploded outside and the apartment window shattered.

And the tang of blood filled the air.

Not Peter’s.

“Foggy,” Matt gasped.

No response. Not from Foggy, anyway. Peter was back on his feet, shooting webbing at all the windows, shutting out the warmth of the sunlight.

And Foggy wasn’t moving. His heart was still beating and he was still breathing, but both of those things were slowing down and there was blood everywhere and _he wasn’t moving_.

“Foggy!” Matt was on his knees, ghosting his hand over Foggy’s torso, trying to clear his head of the scent of copper. Where was it, where was the blood coming from?

“Matt,” Peter said suddenly, shakily. “Stop.”

Matt ran his hand up Foggy’s jaw, fanning his fingers across his best friend’s face. Nothing, nothing, where was the blood?

“Don’t touch it!” Peter shrieked as Matt moved his hand to Foggy’s hair. Then Peter spun around, and Matt distantly registered the sound and smell of someone throwing up.

Then Matt found the blood. In Foggy’s hair, plastered to his skull. And…and a _hole_. Matt jerked his hand back like his fingers had been stabbed.

Shot in the head, shot in the head, _shot in the head_.

The part of Matt’s brain that was screaming that his best friend had been shot in the head disengaged, along with the part of his brain that was ten years old and kneeling over his dad’s body, until all that was left was the part of his brain that had no emotional attachment to any of this. It wasn’t Matt; it was Daredevil, whose only interest was saving a victim of violence.

“Peter,” he barked. “Ambulance. Now. And I need webbing.” While he was saying all of this, he was tearing off his shirt and pressing it to the wound, forcing his senses to take stock of the situation. The bullet had passed straight through the top part of the back of Foggy’s skull. He couldn’t hear any parts of the bullet inside, although there were probably splinters of bone in the wound.

Peter passed Matt a pile of webbing while he stuttered the address into his phone. Willing his hand to stop shaking, Matt tore it into two clumps and pressed it to the entrance and exit wounds on either side of Foggy’s head. The webbing immediately sopped up the blood, the copper mixing with the synthetic tang and the smell of vomit and that was it, that was the most he could do.

He couldn’t _think_.

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” he mumbled, lightning-fast. “He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside still waters, He restores my soul, He leads me in the path of righteousness for His name’s sake—”

“On its way,” Peter rasped. “The ambulance.”

“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of—God, _no_ ,” he choked out. He couldn’t, he couldn’t do this.

Sirens blared outside.

Blood still oozed over Matt’s fingers.

“More webbing,” he snapped. Peter thrust it at him, and he added it to the mess. It was gonna be stuck in Foggy’s hair forever, he’d have to get another haircut, Marci would be furious.

Footsteps racing up the stairs.

“Peter, get out.”

Peter didn’t.

“Peter, get _out_.”

“He might shoot again!”

Right. Paramedics figuring out who Peter was were less of a threat than the gunman who, for all they knew, was still out there. But Matt didn’t have the energy to cover for Peter. It was all Matt could do to press his forehead against Foggy’s, feeling his friend’s wavering breaths, and hold the webbing tighter against the twin wounds.

He heard Peter kick his webshooters under a couch just as the door burst open. Paramedics swarmed in and Matt found himself jostled away. Someone was asking questions. Yeah, there was a gunshot. No, he wasn’t injured. Yeah, Spiderman was there and he stuck webbing everywhere and then he left. No, Matt had no idea which way Spiderman went, out the front door, obviously, but Matt was _blind_ and _Spiderman didn’t matter_.

Then Foggy was on a stretcher and people were carrying him outside. No one stopped Matt from trailing after him, counting each beat of Foggy’s heart.

_Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen—_

Silence.

“It stopped!” Matt screamed, and the paramedic with her finger at Foggy’s neck shouted for a defibrillator at the same time.

“Clear!”

It was like Matt could feel the electric shocks. He wished that were true, that this was happening to him instead. Now he was counting seconds of silence.

_Five, six, seven—_

“He’s back,” the paramedic reported as sound filled the silence once more. They loaded Foggy into the ambulance and pushed Matt away when he tried to follow, giving him a blanket like that would make a difference. Not enough room, not enough room for Matt when the trauma was this severe, and they didn’t have anyone to spare to make sure the blind guy didn’t touch the wrong thing.

No one said that last part out loud.

 

Matt didn’t hate hospitals. Hospitals let people like Claire do their jobs. Hospitals saved lives.

He just hated _being_ in hospitals.

Especially now.

His mouth was dry as he sat in the waiting room, focusing all his attention on a little kid explaining a TV show to his mother in extreme detail. There was a water fountain down the hall, but it didn’t smell great, and he didn’t want to move.

The front doors slid apart, which he noticed only because Karen was the one who’d triggered them. There was her sweet scent, and there were the two heartbeats. His eyes suddenly stung, so he lifted them towards the ceiling before any tears could escape. She drew closer, running her hands up his arms until she cupped his face.

“You okay?” she whispered.

Was _he_ okay? What about her? “Karen, I…”

“Shh.” She kissed him gently, then slid her hands back down to his wrists. “Oh, Matt,” she said softly. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

He had no idea what she was talking about, but he let her tow him into the nearest bathroom. She sat him down on the edge of the toilet, moistened paper towels, and started cleaning his hands.

Oh. Because they were still covered in Foggy’s blood. His brain was so overwhelmed by the smell of it that it was hard to tell anymore. Her fingers trembled.

“He’s gonna be okay,” Matt said.

“I know,” she answered immediately.

“Really, Karen. We’re not…we’re not gonna lose him.”

“I know.” She put the paper towels in the trash.

“And it’s not like he hasn’t been shot before.”

“Three times,” she agreed thinly. “He’s gotta get a new hobby.”

He swallowed tightly. “I miss him.”

“He’ll be okay.”

“He’ll be okay,” Matt repeated. He bit down hard on his lip. It was shaking, he was shaking, they were both shaking with the effort of holding together. “Karen,” he blurted out. “Can I—”

She wrapped her arms around him and he pressed his face into her neck as they quietly fell apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *hugs you all* *hands out chocolate* *apologizes profusely*  
> Really, it's gonna be okay and I'm actually really excited about some plot points that open up because of this and it'll just make the whole world appreciate Foggy Nelson that much more, so...worth it? Maybe?
> 
> *Spoiler alert* I did a ridiculous amount of research into how one can be shot in the head and survive so Foggy is NOT dead.


	19. Anchor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Anchor" by Beautiful Eulogy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlPq24GFJhs).
> 
> Warning: Catholicism? I mean, it’s not actually a particularly Catholic scene. It’s more that I went down one of my research rabbit holes concerning the book of Job because the show never really addressed Matt’s initial objections to it. Please note that the point of the scene with Father Driscoll is not to argue that one worldview of suffering is better than another or that everyone has to respond to suffering one specific way. Instead, (I hope) that this scene is 1) representing the book of Job more fully, and 2) helping Matt move to a place where something can go wrong and he doesn’t Completely Panic. But, yeah. Just a heads up that this chapter gets pretty philosophical about suffering. Please take care of yourselves!
> 
> Also, the reference to a McDuffie is just for my own amusement. There is, sadly, no Kirsten McDuffie in this story. BUT THE COMICS WITH HER IN THEM ARE AMAZING AND SHE IS AMAZING AND Y'ALL SHOULD GET TO KNOW HER.
> 
> Finally, a sticker to anyone who catches the oblique Lord of the Rings reference.

Matt

There were a thousand heart monitors beeping at all different rates throughout the hospital, but Matt couldn’t get Foggy’s out of his head. If he stopped listening even for a second…he might never hear it again.

He’d been waiting for hours in a quiet room off to the side of the lobby. Not that it was quiet to him; he still heard Foggy’s monitor and he still heard the voices of surgeons echoing in his head, barking orders at each other about _incisions_ and a…a _bone flap_. But it was private. A handful of chairs, a love seat, some plants that made the place smell just a bit fresher than the rest of the hospital, designed to offer privacy for victims of violent crime. Matt wasn’t sure why they’d put him there, exactly, but he wasn’t complaining either. It wasn’t a terrible room.

It was just lonely.

Karen wasn’t there anymore. She’d started talking about the things she should get for Foggy and then she’d started talking about things she should get for herself and Matt in case they stayed there overnight and then she’d freaked out at the thought of leaving Frank alone in the apartment because _what if the shooter got to Frank, Matt?_ and Matt didn’t think the labradoodle was the priority and he definitely didn’t want to let Karen out of his senses, but he also didn’t think Karen wanted to sit still and he knew better than to try to force her to stay. So he’d nodded like checking on Frank’s safety was of paramount importance and pretended he was okay with her promise to text every ten minutes.

She hadn’t missed a text yet.

As if on cue, his phone chirped. He ran his thumb over the screen until it read out her message: _Everything okay. Giving Frank a bath._

Frank, to Matt’s memory, did not need a bath. But Karen clearly needed to spend the time giving Frank a bath. Matt texted something back that he hoped sounded like a normal response and stiffened when he heard footsteps approaching down the hall outside, accompanied by the scent of the precinct. Too close. The room had a window and Matt really didn’t care about the fact that he was on the third floor, but he’d been so focused on Foggy’s monitor that he hadn’t registered the approaching officer until it was too late. Now the door was already opening.

“Matthew Murdock? They told me I could talk to you here.”

It was Robinson, the young police officer who’d taken Matt in after Fisk shared that stupid video. Beneath the scent of the precinct, he smelled of leather, too-strong deodorant, and some kind of rodent. A hamster? Guinea pig? Matt wasn’t sure, but he didn’t like it.

“I wish I could say it’s good to see you again, Mr. Murdock,” Robinson said, sounding awkward as he closed the door behind him.

“If you’re here to arrest me,” Matt said tiredly, “can we please skip the handcuffs.”

“Just need to get your statement about, uh…the shooting.”

Right.

Wait.

No.

The reality of what was about to happen crashed down on Matt like a physical weight. He wanted to sink into the floor. Instead, he made a point of standing up and not leaning on his cane. “What questions do you have for me, Officer?”

“Well…” Robinson sounded strangely awkward. He lowered his voice. “First, I was wondering if you could tell us any leads you might have as to who’s responsible. No need to dump anyone unconscious outside the station this time—just give us a name and we’ll take it from there.”

Matt pointedly adjusted his glasses. “I’m not Daredevil, Officer.”

“Sorry.” Pulling out a pen, Robinson clicked it twice more than necessary. “So. Mr. Murdock, I understand you were present during the incident.”

Foggy’s heartbeat skipped. Someone in his room spouted medical jargon that Matt couldn’t understand. He knew as soon as he attempted the smile that anyone would immediately see it as fake; he shouldn’t have bothered. “Yeah. I was there.”

“Can you describe for us what happened?”

He could do this. Just words, that was all it was. “I was there with, uh…with the kid. Peter. He wanted to meet with Foggy and me.”

“What about?”

Matt forced his face into a chilled, neutral expression. “Mentorship.” He left it at that, not wanting to give details that might contradict whatever Peter might say.

Robinson seemed satisfied for now. “And then what happened?”

“The window broke. I heard one shot fired. We all went down and…” And Foggy’s blood, and the bullet hole, and his sluggish heartbeat, just as slow as the heart monitor now beeping somewhere. Matt tugged at the collar of his shirt. “And that was it.”

“That was it?” Robinson echoed confusedly. “Wasn’t Spiderman there?”

Webbing. Right. “Yeah, he…he showed up. I don’t know where he came from and I don’t know where he went. Sorry, I didn’t think to mention it. I was focused on F—on my friend.”

“Understandable.” Robinson made a note. “Do you know the identity of the shooter?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

Matt clenched his jaw. “Yes.”

“All right, just checking. Now…” His voice became more urgent. “Can you think of any reason why someone would target you, your partner, or the kid?”

“Peter and I weren’t the target.” Matt tried not to flinch at the sudden scratching of Robinson’s pen against paper. “There was only one shot fired. The target was hit and the target was Foggy. You gotta—” His voice tightened. “You gotta protect him.”

Because Matt already failed at that.

“We’ve got a detail on him,” Robinson promised. “But…” He lowered his voice, though Matt wasn’t stupid enough to think that any show of comradery was actually real. “You and your partner have a history with Benjamin Poindexter. I assume you know by now that he’s escaped from prison?”

Great. Matt did not need the NYPD trying any harder to find Dex right now. He tilted his head at the sound of a familiar set of heels advancing briskly down the hall. “You should look into all of Fisk’s connections.”

If Robinson was unhappy about being bossed around by a defense attorney, he didn’t show it. Just shrugged. “Good news is, Fisk doesn’t have so many resources. Not anymore. Thanks to you.”

Matt almost smiled. “I’m not Daredevil, Officer.”

“Sorry.” Robinson took a breath, but before he could ask another question, the door swept opened.

Marci swept into the room, voice made of steel and brittle plates of armor. “Excuse me, but did you ask Mr. Murdock if he wanted counsel present? How long has this interview been going on? What’s your name—Robin…?”

Robinson took an actual step back, like that would do any good against Marci’s personality. “Murdock’s a witness,” he stammered. “Who let you in here?”

“I’m Marci Stahl.” She pulled a card out of her purse and held it out, almost in Robinson’s face but not quite close enough to be unprofessional. “Murdock’s lawyer.”

Robinson nervously took the card. “He’s just a witness,” he repeated.

Matt almost wanted to laugh.

“Oh, I _see_ ,” Marci said acerbically. “You’ve got a shot fired from across the street and your best witness is a blind man, who’s the partner and personal friend of the victim and who is definitely in shock. Good to know our tax dollars are being used so _judiciously_.”

Matt was not in shock. Was he?

“I suggest,” Marci went on, voice dropping to a hiss, stepping closer so that Robinson had to take another step back, “that you focus your resources on finding witnesses who might actually tell you something, and not harassing the first person you can think of. The shooter didn’t use a _handgun_ , so there must be someone in another building who _saw_ _something_ , but I’ll give you a hint—that someone isn’t Matt.”

“Ma’am,” Robinson tried. Brave of him.

“Anyway.” Marci waved her hand dismissively at his notebook. “You got his statement, right? However useful it may be. So unless my client is under arrest—” Her voice somehow became even more dangerous, “—you should leave.”

Robinson turned perpendicular to Marci, facing Matt like he thought his best bet was to pretend she wasn’t there. “If you come across anything, Mr. Murdock, we’d appreciate it if you let us know. Rather than, uh, trying to deal with it yourself.”

“He’s not Daredevil,” Marci spat.

“Sorry!” With that, Robinson ducked out the door, taking care to not let it slam behind him.

The fight drained out of Marci with the officer’s receding footsteps. She slumped into a chair so suddenly that Matt shot to his feet in case she’d fainted.

“Where’re you going?” she muttered.

“Nowhere.” He sat back down beside her. Rubbed his hands over his pants. There was a splotch of dried blood on his knee. He tried to cover it with his palm before Marci saw it. “Uh. Thanks.”

“It felt good to yell at someone,” she said bluntly. “You should try it sometime.”

Yelling felt pretty useless compared to his preferred method of anger management. He kept his voice low and even and in control. “How are you holding up?”

“And that is the first phrase I’m banning.”

He was pretty sure all of his phrases were going to get banned. It wasn’t like he had much to work with besides stock comforts that she clearly didn’t want to hear. “You’re his emergency contact?” he guessed instead.

“It was you for a while, you know.”

Matt frowned. “No, it was his parents.”

“Until they moved to Florida.”

But…that meant Foggy had chosen Matt even while he’d been with Marci. And that meant Foggy had chosen Matt soon enough after beating Fisk the second time that Matt had just barely been _Matt_.

“We weren’t engaged yet,” she explained, twisting the ring around her finger. “I think maybe he didn’t want to pressure me.”

Matt leaned forward to put his head in his hands, careful to rest his elbow over the patch of dried blood.

Suddenly, Marci was on her feet. “I’m gonna go find someone, make sure he’s—” Her voice cracked.

“He’s still alive,” Matt told her. “I can hear his heart monitor.”

“…Oh.” She sat back down and spent about a minute in silence before saying, “I can’t figure out if that would be a blessing or a curse.”

“You just summed up my entire life.” He didn’t think that was something anyone could figure out, though. It was all too complicated to be organized in such neat little boxes. When Marci made an irritated little sound, probably because he was being a bit too genuine for her taste, Matt stood up. “We should clear out of here. Someone else’ll need the room.”

“Don’t do that,” Marci muttered. “Don’t be selfless right now.”

Matt felt a flash of irrational annoyance with her just like she felt with him, so he offered a vague smile that might possibly pass for friendly and left the room, swinging his cane as he made his way down the hall towards the waiting room. The opposite direction of Foggy’s room, not that it made a difference. He couldn’t get away from the sounds.

Halfway down the hall, he stopped—and not only because the waiting room smelled weirdly like bleach. He recognized one of the heartbeats ahead and the smell of old books and a whiff of smoke. Someone from the church. Not Maggie, thank God. He hadn’t told her what happened—was not ready to deal with her compassion. But it was Father Driscoll, and that was almost as bad.

Did someone call him? Father Lantom wouldn’t have done this. Father Lantom was always so careful, always waited for Matt to go to him first.  But if Driscoll was here, Matt at least needed to figure out if Maggie was on her way so he could prepare himself. Sighing, he walked into the waiting room and sat down in the chair next to Driscoll, who didn’t seem at all surprised that Matt had known where to find him. At least he’d taken Matt’s explanation of his abilities seriously.

“What are you doing here?” Matt asked.

“Mrs. McDuffie’s here visiting her sister. She called me when she recognized you.”

Matt blinked. “Who?”

“McDuffie? Small, always wears hats? Talks nonstop about her chihuahuas?”

The church included several older women who smelled strongly of their various pets. Matt just shook his head.

“Oh. Well, she recognized you. I didn’t realize she hadn’t talked to you.” Driscoll rubbed at the back of his neck. “Can I…can I ask why you’re here?”

“My best friend was shot,” Matt whispered. Because of what he did, who he was.

Driscoll let out a long exhale. “What’s his status?”

Matt had to jerk his senses back from Foggy’s operating room across the hospital. “Still in surgery. It’s not—they don’t—” He pressed the heel of his hand to his head. “I can’t stop _listening_.”

“Are you sure you should still be here?”

Matt dragged his hand down his face and tried his hardest to stare disbelievingly at Driscoll.

“Ah, right. Do you need anything, then? Food?”

“I’m fine. Thank you,” he added belatedly.

Driscoll gave a small nod and sat still.

Matt wondered how long he’d stay there if Matt didn’t say anything, didn’t give Driscoll a problem to fix. “Does Maggie know?”

“Not yet.”

Matt nodded slowly. “You must have other people to take care of.”

“But I’m here now.”

Well, Matt wasn’t going to kick him out. He closed his eyes. “What do you say to people? When you…” He motioned at the waiting room. “When you find them in places like this?”

Driscoll shifted on the poor padding of his chair. “It depends on what they seem to need. Some people—not you, apparently—really need a good cheeseburger. Others need prayer. Others need a distraction.”

“And what do you say when people ask why this happens?”

Driscoll didn’t answer right away. “Again, it depends. Some people don’t care about the answer as much as they care to be heard. So I listen. But for most people, I tell them honestly that I don’t know.”

Figured.

“I take it you’re familiar with the book of Job?”

Matt was too drained to feel embarrassed. “So Sister Maggie talked to you.”

“No.” He sounded confused. “Why?”

“No reason.” Whatever point Father Driscoll wanted to make, Matt was already pretty sure he didn’t want to hear it. Strangely, though, he didn’t want Driscoll to be disappointed, so he tried to give the priest a warning. “This really isn’t the best time for me to, you know, experience any revelations.”

Driscoll shrugged. “Fair enough. I’ll lower my expectations.”

Matt lifted his head, trying to figure out if Driscoll was being sarcastic.

The priest didn’t clarify. “That being said, one lesson from the book of Job is that tragedy is a time to reevaluate our understanding of who God is. I can’t think of any time when we’re forced to confront our view of God more than when we feel betrayed by Him.”

Matt noted that he had the decency not to say that tragedy was a _good_ time to reevaluate. “I don’t feel betrayed.”

“Maybe not,” Driscoll said quietly, in a voice that clearly implied that he didn’t believe it.

Another nurse or a doctor joined the chaos in Foggy’s room and Matt clenched the armrest of his chair. “Just how many lessons are there in this curriculum?” he asked through gritted teeth.

“We could talk about something else if you’d prefer.”

A debate about some obscure aspect of the law would probably distract him from the sounds, but Driscoll wouldn’t be able to sustain the conversation.  Matt made a silent deal: if the priest stuck to technical aspects and kept emotion out of it, Matt would engage him on religion. “Sorry. Go on.”

Driscoll waited a moment before answering, like he was studying Matt. “The book of Job is pretty unique. It raises the question of _why_ people suffer, but it goes on to answer completely different questions. Which is not to say, I think, that the first question is the wrong one to ask. But there were other truths Job needed to learn before anything else would make any sense.”

“The book never gives an answer for why Job suffered,” Matt pointed out. “It basically just tells humanity to shut up and trust God.”

“You say that like it’s easy,” Driscoll remarked.

“Shouldn’t it be?” Matt challenged.

“Not realistically. It’s a long process for Job, coming to a point of trust. He starts off defending himself against his own so-called friends, who insist that the world can be understood through simple cause and effect. Karma, basically. They insisted that the only reason Job suffered was because of the wrong he’d done. But the readers know that Job was righteous.”

“God’s perfect servant,” Matt muttered, counting the beats of Foggy’s heart monitor in his head.

Driscoll inclined his head in agreement. “So his friends are objectively incorrect, and their advice that Job fix his sin only leaves Job more discouraged and isolated than before. Job finds it easier to blame God. That’s Job’s theology: he doesn’t deserve suffering, and therefore the only explanation is that God in His sovereignty is either utterly, terrifyingly arbitrary…or intentionally targeting Job.” Driscoll paused. “So Job turns to God with a direct accusation.”

Was that a bad thing? “You said before that we’re supposed to be honest with what we don’t understand.”

“Well, yes. But it’s not that simple. God wants us—invites us, actually—to seek Him even as we rage at Him. But faith means believing something we don’t see or feel. For instance, God appreciates when His children tell Him that they have no _sense_ of His love, but it’s something different to accuse Him of being _unloving_.” Driscoll paused. “Job didn’t come to God to admit that he was struggling to _believe_ in God’s justice—he accused God of _being unjust_. Plenty of honesty, but no faith. Only pride and anger.”

Someone hurried past the police officers guarding Foggy’s room. “The anger seems pretty justified.”

“Only if you agree that Job’s suffering really was unfair.”

“Not even God ever says it’s not.”

“True,” Driscoll acknowledged, “but God’s response still tells us a great deal about how suffering fits into the grand scheme of things. God turns to Job with three sets of questions. A cross-examination, if you will.”

It was such an obvious attempt at _relating_ that Matt couldn’t quite stop himself from rolling his eyes.

Driscoll didn’t seem to have noticed. “God asks Job a series of questions about the science of the world, all highlighting that no matter how much Job learned, there would always be things he couldn’t explain.”

Because responding to Job’s suffering by putting him in his place sounded so very helpful.

Driscoll must’ve noticed the look on Matt’s face. “Job needed the comfort of trusting something bigger than he was,” he said softly. “It’s hard to trust God if you think you’re God.”

“Still. It’s pretty heartless.”

“Maybe I’d agree with you if the point was to rub Job’s limitations in his face, but each question highlights who God is in contrast. God’s character is the focus, not Job.” He paused again. “And that should be a comfort.”

It wasn’t.

“Each question implies that God, unlike us, oversees and understands every scientific law and force. It’s a display of God’s power coupled with His intentionality in maintaining order through chaos.”

Matt raised his eyebrows. “So God’s showing off in the face of Job’s suffering. Much better.”

“God’s reminding Job who He is, since it’s hard to trust a stranger,” Driscoll countered. “But you’ll probably like God’s second set of questions better. They’re about God’s approach to animals. How He provides food for them, watches over mothers giving birth, and understands each animal’s strengths and weaknesses—from the foolishness of the ostrich to the power and fearlessness of a war horse. It’s a demonstration of His attentiveness to every detail and His care for His creation. If we see God’s faithfulness to these animals, we can trust God’s faithfulness to us.”

With how much Matt scrambled to protect the people he cared about, the thought of God watching over every animal on Earth was…something.

“But, of course, animals suffer. They die.” Driscoll shrugged. “They even kill each other. So is God really good to them? That leads to the final part of God’s response to Job: a description of the Leviathan. There’s some debate about what it actually was—anything from a dinosaur to some ancient hippopotamus to something entirely mythical—and about what it might represent, and I expect you don’t want to hear about all that right now. What we do know is that the Leviathan was untamable, described as king over everything that’s haughty and proud…which marks the end of God’s speech. Meaning, I think, that we’d better pay attention to the issue of pride.”

Matt concentrated on Driscoll’s unwavering heartbeat. “But the question is about suffering, Father.”

“They’re not so unrelated. Tell me something.” Driscoll shifted a little closer. “If one animal kills another, is that the circle of life or is it murder?”

Matt sighed. “Please don’t hide behind the Lion King.”

“If one man is executed for murdering,” Driscoll pressed, “and another man is executed for lying, are both deaths just?”

“No,” Matt said curtly. “The first death was proportional.”

“What the liar’s lie leads to five deaths a year later? Wouldn’t anyone be justified in killing the liar before he caused those other deaths? Maybe standing idly by while the liar goes about his business is actually the thing that’s morally wrong.”

That sounded like Frank Castle’s philosophy. “It’s not our call. You know that.”

“So if it’s not our call whether killing is just or unjust, why should it be our call whether suffering is just or unjust? In both cases, we’re so limited in our knowledge of cause and effect that we can’t do anything more than guess. And if we’re just guessing either way, we might as well trust God.”

That sounded nice until Matt let his senses spread back towards Foggy, towards the listless heart monitor, towards the smell of Foggy’s blood and the sense of _emptiness_ where part of his _brain_ should be. “That doesn’t _help_ ,” he burst out.

Driscoll set his hand on Matt’s leg. “Can I be blunt?”

Matt tensed. “Please.”

“When you had that accident, was it worth it? With all the ways you’ve been able to…help people?”

Matt clenched his jaw. He loved his senses, loved everything they enabled him to do. But. “I don’t know. I don’t know what my life would’ve been like otherwise.”

Driscoll’s voice softened. “And that, Matthew, is the point. Which of any of us have enough knowledge of our own lives and the lives around us to determine whether any suffering is fair?”

“I just…” Matt rubbed at his forehead. “I guess I figured we’re supposed to just remember that God works all things for good. That we can’t see the whole picture, but once we do see it clearly, we’ll see the beauty. Like how God gave Job a new life and a new family after…after everything.”

Driscoll hummed thoughtfully. “Yes, but God doesn’t respond to Job’s accusations with a promise that everything will work out for the best…even though that sentiment is supposedly true. Instead, God’s response to Job’s very immediate pain is an invitation that Job recognize how small he is in the grand scheme of things and find comfort in God’s _character_.”

Fine, but at times like this it felt like Matt knew next to nothing about God’s character, so where was the comfort supposed to come from?

Father. God was supposed to be a father. And Matt was starting to get a better idea of what that might mean. He cleared his throat. “Sister Maggie never talked about all of this when I asked her about Job. Back when I was…recovering.”

“Would you have listened?” Driscoll asked mildly.

Matt managed a wry smile. “I guess not.” The smile slipped away. “Father, my best friend might not ever _wake up_. If that—if that’s how this turns out, I can’t just _decide_ to be okay with it.”

“You don’t have to be okay with it.”

Easy for Driscoll to say. He didn’t have to live second by second with the anger and fear and guilt. (Why hadn’t Matt grabbed Foggy _first?_ Peter had his spidey sense and accelerated hearing. Why hadn’t Matt grabbed Foggy?)

But Matt could try, at least, to focus on other things. Better things, all the good things he’d been given. If only because he really couldn’t afford to break down right now. So he took a deep, measured breath, then cocked his head away from Foggy’s room towards the front of the hospital as the automatic doors slid open.

Karen stepped in, footsteps heavy under the weight of the large bag she carried and smelling of doggy shampoo. She didn’t have Frank, but she did have Micah and Maeva Vallier.

“Excuse me,” Matt stammered, jumping to his feet. Karen met him in the middle of the waiting room, her arms immediately locking around his neck. “You okay?” he murmured.

“Do you want me to call Stone, too?” she asked.

“Why?” Matt asked stupidly.

“I just thought you might want him here.”

“I’m…” _Fine,_ he wanted to say. But although he’d told a lot of lies in his life, he couldn’t manage this one. “Yeah. Please. Wait, no.” He wanted that, he really did. But he put his hand over her pocket as she reached for her phone. “He needs to focus on keeping Dex out of this. Whatever this is.” He jerked his chin towards the Valliers. “What’re they doing here?”

“I thought you might like to see them.” She sounded almost nervous. “I can tell them to leave if you—”

“No, it’s…it’s fine.” He rubbed at his eyes. Only then did it register that Ella wasn’t with them. In fact, it seemed like none of this had anything to do with Ella at all. They were there just for him.

Stepping back, Karen gestured to them, and they made their way over. Micah stopped an arm’s length away, but Maeva walked right up to Matt and embraced him before he could evade her. Matt hadn’t thought he needed any hugs, but…apparently, he did.

Maeva’s voice was in his ear. “We’re so sorry.”

Not because they thought it was their fault but because they cared.

“You can stay at our place tonight, if you want.” Micah’s voice was rough, like he didn’t really know what to do with it.

Matt nodded, realizing a second later that he didn’t know why he was agreeing to this. He should stay here. He should put something over his eyes and go wait on the roof in case…in case Fisk tried again. But he hadn’t tried again after failing to get to Ella and he hadn’t tried again once Maggie was safe. And now there were police officers guarding Foggy’s door, and besides…Fisk had already done plenty of damage.

He heard the slow beeping of Foggy’s heart monitor that somehow managed to sound frail.

Matt nodded again, more firmly this time. “I just need to…” In his rush to get to Karen, he’d left his cane by Father Driscoll. He took one step that direction, making a show of feeling his way down a row of chairs and hoping the other people in the waiting room hadn’t noticed how he’d navigated before. But Driscoll met him halfway, subtly sliding Matt’s folded-up cane into his hand and squeezing Matt’s shoulder before heading purposefully down the hall. Off to help someone else in crisis.

Micah led the way towards the automatic doors, but Matt stopped when he realized Karen wasn’t following. He turned back to her. “Sweetheart? Are you coming?”

Arms folded tightly against herself, she sniffed. “No, I, um…I think I just wanna be alone for a bit longer.”

That didn’t sound good at all. Matt returned to her side, taking her hand and pressing his thumb against her wrist. “You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m just…gonna stay here in case, um.” She gave her head a sharp shake. “I’ll let you know when he wakes up.”

“Karen,” he said carefully. “I don’t think you should wait here alone.”

She scoffed weakly. “If you say it’s not safe, I’m going to hit you.”

“No, I just mean…I don’t think you should be alone.” Leaning closer, he lowered his voice. “Come with me. Hang out with Ella. Let Maeva feed you. Let me take care of you.”

“You of all people don’t have to take care of anyone right now. He’s been your best friend since college.”

Yeah, but he’d been Karen’s best friend since she met him. “Let me try to take care of you,” he insisted quietly. “Or let the Valliers take care of both of us.”


	20. I Know You're Cold, But Come Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Headlights" by Classic Crime (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdnW7H0hlrs) which is such a sad!Matt song that it breaks my heart.
> 
> Also, warning: prevention of attempted sexual assault. Take care of yourselves!

Matt

The Valliers took them home, just so they could be somewhere else.

Mostly, Matt simply melted into the couch with an empty feeling in his chest that even Karen pressed up against his side couldn’t touch. Maeva offered them tea, coffee, alcohol, whatever they wanted. Micah sat on the floor with Ella, who knew more or less that had happened, apparently, and she was terrifyingly subdued. She sniffled once in a while, but she was keeping it together. Being brave. Meanwhile, Micah was struggling his way through braiding her hair. Or something. Matt distracted himself listening to the thick strands winding together, though he couldn’t figure out exactly what Micah was doing. Ella probably didn’t care what he was up to as long as he stayed with her.

Matt rubbed at his eyes. _Dad, why didn’t you just go down in the fifth? Why would you leave?_

It was Maeva, of all people, who finally broke the silence. “Do you know who did this?”

If he did, did she think he’d be sitting here?

Ella tilted her head up, eyebrows drawing fiercely together. “What about that guy who came after me with the drug?”

“Dex,” Matt said, a little startled. He hadn’t really expected her to participate in the conversation. An obvious oversight. “Couldn’t have been. Stone’s with him.”

With a displeased sound, probably because her guess had been shot down, she slumped where she was sitting, causing Micah to hastily readjust his hands as he kept her braids under control.

Silence fell again. It was a peaceful kind of silence that would’ve been soothing if Matt weren’t replaying the attack in his head. But Stick had been so adamant that Matt learn from his mistakes, always pushing him to review every failure, that the silence couldn’t spread to his brain.

At least, he thought it was because of Stick. But maybe that was something normal people also did, because Karen suddenly cleared her throat like she couldn’t stand the quiet either. “So, um, Matt and I actually have some good news.” She sat up a little straighter and he squeezed her hand as all the Valliers focused on them. “We’re pregnant.”

Something about hearing her say that spread something warm through Matt’s chest, briefly pushing out the empty feeling. Maeva let out a little shriek and Ella started repeatedly asking, “What?” while Micah, after a moment’s hesitation, started laughing.

“Twelve weeks,” Karen went on, beautiful pride in her voice.

There was a round of congratulations that Matt didn’t quite know how to respond to and a rapid-fire, G-rated explanation to Ella, who for all her experience with adult situations didn’t seem to know how to make sense of this particular development. Then Maeva was disappearing into the kitchen, shutting down any protests because, “Y’all need to eat!”

“You’ve done it now,” Micah murmured. “She won’t stop making you things.”

Ella scooted across the room to sit on the floor in front of the couch, much more interested in Matt and Karen than braids. “Like, a baby?”

“Yeah,” Karen said through a smile, pointing at her stomach. “Right here.”

“Like Megan’s mom?” She twisted around to look at Micah for confirmation. When he nodded, she turned back to Karen. “A girl?” she asked hopefully.

“We won’t find out for a while. It’s still growing.”

“Wait!” Ella sounded suddenly horrified. “Does Foggy know?”

Karen froze. “Yeah,” Matt said quickly, trying to ignore the sick feeling twisting through his gut at the thought of Foggy not…not ever.... 

To his relief, Maeva popped back in to say she’d made some kind of ancient-family-secret soup. He wasn’t hungry at all, but once Karen and Matt were dutifully seated on stools in front of the counter, Maeva retreated back into the living room. Occupying Ella and giving them space.

Which was nice because Matt didn’t want to be rude but there was no way he could eat this. Closing his eyes, he counted each beat of the tiny heart next to him while Karen worked her way mechanically through her bowl.

Eventually, she laid her hand on his arm. “You okay?” She tensed. “I mean…I just mean, you’re not eating. You should eat.”

“No, I’m fine.”

“When’s the last time you ate anything?”

He didn’t even know.

“Matt.” Her voice was so full of concern, he couldn’t stand it. “Try.”

Fine. He put half a spoonful in his mouth and swallowed as quickly as possible, but he wasn’t fast enough— _controlled_ enough—to stop the sudden chorus in his brain. A film of dishwasher soap left on the spoon, chicken, vegetable oil, celery that was too old, chicken stock (he could practically taste the gelatin), and, oh, cheese from two different dairies.

Stick was right.

Stick was right about everything.

He pushed the bowl away, stomach tight.

“Matt?”

Great, now he was causing Karen more distress and he wasn’t sure what excuse he could give that wouldn’t just alarm her more, so he settled on the truth. “If I eat that, I’ll just throw up.”

“Oh,” she said softly. He’d told her, once, about Stick and vanilla ice cream. He told her before they were even dating which, looking back, felt pretty bold. But she’d painstakingly made him some kind of your-fridge-is-too-empty casserole that would’ve been delicious, except that he knew just from smelling it that the hamburger meat really should’ve been eaten about two days sooner. It was the kind of thing that he could never fully ignore, but he could usually work past it without a problem. Usually.

But the day she’d brought the casserole was the anniversary of his dad’s death and…well.

Still, he couldn’t help hoping that she was interpreting his aversion to food right now as a symptom of being a wreck in general, not as anything connected to Stick.

Small footsteps entered the room from behind. “Hey, Ella,” he said without turning around.

She didn’t say anything back, an anomaly that somehow managed to worry him despite the fact that he didn’t think he was capable of worrying about one more thing. Her head was barely higher than the counter; she walked around and folded her arms on it, dropping her chin onto her arms. Probably staring.

Karen swiftly took control of the conversation. “How was school, Ella?”

“Um, it was okay.” Ella was clearly searching for more to say on the subject. “I got the highest score on my spelling test.”

“That’s awesome. My brother was always really good at spelling.”

“You have a brother?”

Matt opened his mouth before he actually figured out how to intervene, but it didn’t matter. Karen’s phone vibrated.

“Sorry,” she said, slipping of the stool and retreating to the hallway by the front door. Matt heard Ellison’s voice, tiny and distorted through the phone, asking if she was okay.

Ella hesitated only a moment before stealing Karen’s stool. “You haven’t eaten your soup,” she observed. “You don’t like it?”

“No, it’s…I’m sure it’s delicious. I’m not hungry.”

“I can _hear_ your stomach growling.” She paused, probably scrutinizing him. He tried not to shift under the intensity of a gaze he couldn’t see. “Are you allergic?”

“No,” he said awkwardly.

“Are you nervous? Because there’s a baby?” Before he could answer that, she guessed again. “Do you have bad memories with chicken soup?”

That was…not a terrible guess, really.

“Is it because you have trauma?” she insisted when he didn’t respond quickly enough.

“What? No.” He heaved a deep sigh of resignation. “Ella, you know how I can hear really well?” She nodded. “It’s not just hearing. It’s all my senses.”

“Except seeing,” she reminded him helpfully.

He cracked a grin. “Yeah, except that one.” He tilted his head. “Remember how I told you about…about that guy who raised me?”

“The one you said was like my old dad?”

“Yeah, him. He taught me to be really aware of my senses all the time. It’s a self-defense thing. So sometimes when I try to sleep, all I hear are all the sounds. And sometimes when I try to eat, all I taste are all the different ingredients.” And dish soap, but she didn’t need to know that.

“Why?”

“Just, you know, in case whatever I’m eating is poisoned or something.” He heard her tense up. “ _Not_ that I’ve ever been poisoned,” he assured her quickly. Food poisoning because Foggy in law school didn’t understand the concept of expiration dates did not count.

“But you’ve eaten here before,” she persisted.

He sighed again, this time with embarrassment. “Normally, I can block all that stuff out. It’s just…harder when I’m, uh, stressed.” And how Stick would be disappointed by that.

_You think a little stress should keep you from eating? How’re you gonna protect anyone if you faint from hunger? And I don’t get why you’re so emotional anyway, just because your friend got hurt. You knew this would happen. You’ve been expecting it ever since you let his softness into your life._

_Amazing it’s taken this long._

Ella was silent for a moment, a rare blessing. “Mom gets me special crackers when I feel sick and can’t eat anything else. And ginger ale. Would that help?”

From her tone, it was clear she was talking about Maeva, not Elizabeth. It felt like he had to say yes to that, so he nodded reluctantly.

She bustled off to a cupboard for crackers and the fridge for ginger ale and returned before he’d had nearly enough time to control himself. Setting all the stuff on the counter, she boosted herself up on the counter to look at him.

He braced himself for the questions. Surely it was only a matter of time before she asked about Foggy by name. Shouldn’t her parents come get her? They didn’t expect _him_ to explain it, did they?

“Matt,” she said quietly.

So it began. He made an effort to turn his head in her direction.

“Is there any way I can help you?”

Oh, if only. She’d hate to be told no, but he also figured she’d see right through any comforting lie he offered. He just shook his head.

“You don’t really want the crackers, do you?”

Smart girl. He shook his head again.

She picked up the package, turning it over in her hands like it had personally disappointed her. Then she set it down again. “Do you wanna go in the other room? Those chairs aren’t very comfy.”

“I, uh, don’t really wanna talk to anyone right now,” he admitted, praying she’d get the hint.

“Oh. Can I…can I snuggle you? Would that help?”

Snuggle?

“Or…do you want me to go?”

“No,” he said before he could stop himself. “I’m okay with, uh…snuggling.” But he stood up as she hopped off the counter. “Maybe not on that chair, though. You’re right. It’s a miserable chair.”

That was how they ended up on the floor. She was nestled in his lap with her head tucked under his chin, which was nice because that meant she couldn’t see the tears in his eyes.

 

He woke up to Ella sleepily lifting her head. Micah crouched in front of them, one hand on her arm. “Past your bedtime, buttercup,” he was saying in a hushed voice.

“Don’t wanna.” She muffled the words against Matt’s shirt.

“Trust me, you definitely wanna. You wanna sleep in your own bed and not make Matt be your pillow. C’mon.” He picked her up, ignoring her continued half-asleep protestations of _don’t wanna_. “You can stay the night,” he added to Matt. “Maeva’s getting Karen set up in the living room.”

Matt must’ve given some sign of agreement because Micah left to carry Ella upstairs. Pushing himself to his feet, Matt made his way to the living room where Maeva was handing Karen a thick bundle of blankets.

“Our spare room got turned into Ella’s room,” she was saying apologetically, “but the couch might fit you both if you squish. Or…we have plenty of blankets for the floor…”

“We can work with the couch,” Karen assured her. Matt couldn’t say he was opposed to squishing together anyway.

“Okay. Um.” Maeva gave a jerky nod. “Help yourself or get us if you need anything.” She hesitated a second longer, then stepped forward to hug Karen and kiss her cheek. She backed up. “Goodnight.”

“Thank you, Maeva,” Matt said. Karen seemed too surprised to say anything; she lifted her hand uncertainly to her cheek as Maeva left the living room to them.

Karen cleared her throat. “Okay, um…I brought stuff.” Taking his hand, she tugged him into the corner of the living room where she’d dropped the overnight bag and started pulling things out. Their softest pajamas. Her smaller bag of toiletries. His antidepressants. “And…” She widened the bag a little. “This.”

“What?” He ran his hand over whatever was in the bag, but all he felt was fabric.

“Your, um…well, it’s not your suit, obviously, but it’s your black stuff.” She pulled something else out and set it in his hand.

One of his batons. Matt squared his jaw.

“Just in case.” Taking the baton back, she folded everything into the bag and zipped it shut, like someone might be watching through the windows.

In case of _what?_ He didn’t ask and she didn’t clarify.

 

Sleep was impossible, that much was quickly obvious. Meditation didn’t cut it. Listening to Karen’s heartbeat or the baby’s heartbeat only reminded him of the dull pulse of Foggy’s heart monitor. Careful not to nudge Karen off the couch, Matt pressed a little closer and buried his face in her hair, breathing in her scent, unsure whether he was trying to ground himself or lose himself.

Neither worked.

New plan, then. Matt put his training to work to slide out from behind her, keeping his weight off her as he hooked one leg over the back of the couch and slowly pulled himself up along the cushions, balancing at the top edge for just a second to make sure he hadn’t disturbed her before dropping silently to the floor on the other side.

Definitely not a use of his training Stick would’ve approved of. But it was practical.

Although he wasn’t sure what to do with himself now that he was up. He cast his senses around the house, but nothing was out of place. He listened to Ella upstairs, but she wasn’t sleeping peacefully and her short, uneven breaths weren’t exactly calming. He started pacing.

It didn’t make sense. Foggy didn’t kill Vanessa. Or Wesley. Matt wasn’t stupid enough to think Fisk didn’t care about Foggy at all, not when Fisk had emphasized that point by slamming Matt’s face into a table. But this didn’t make _sense_. Unless the police _and_ the FBI were lying, Fisk’s resources were stretched thin. Yet he’d taken the time to send someone with devil’s hell to Ella, and he’d tried to use Melvin to hurt Maggie, and he’d hired some kind of _sniper_ just for Foggy.

And he hadn’t made a single move against Karen. Not that Matt could tell, anyway. Maybe Fisk had tried and just hadn’t been able to find her? Had keeping her at Stone’s really worked so well?

Or was Fisk’s plan more complicated than that?

Matt felt his stomach and chest tightening, his sharp breaths starting to match the pace of Ella’s upstairs as the anxiety built, turning into something heavy in his gut and suffocating in his throat. Maybe this was just mind games. Maybe all of this was just mind games.

It was _working_.

Matt gave his head a harsh shake. He was supposed to be fearless. And he was done playing defense. His feet carried him to Karen’s bag. Digging out his gear, he dressed swiftly in black, laced up his boots, and holstered his batons.

But it would be a complete betrayal to Foggy to disappear into the night without telling Karen.

He crouched beside the couch. It felt sinful to wake her up, to shake her out of any dreams that had to be better than _this_ , but he did it anyway, pulling off his glove and skimming his hand over her shoulder and distracting himself just for a second with the soft texture of her skin.

She pulled herself out of sleep. “Huh?” He wasn’t wearing the mask yet, it was still clutched in one hand, but he could tell exactly when she recognized all the black. Her heartbeat jumped and she jerked upright. “Matt?”

His free hand found one of hers. “I’m gonna go find who did this.”

“Fisk,” she said slowly.

He shook his head. “Whoever pulled the trigger.”

She didn’t say anything.

He gripped her hand tighter. “I’m not asking for permission.”

“I know.” She squeezed back. “It’s okay.”

He closed his eyes. “Thank you.” It was almost a whimper. He leaned in to press his lips to hers—not to ground himself or lose himself but just to reassure them both.

 

Foggy’s apartment was the logical place to start, so that was where he went. He just…hadn’t anticipated how hard it would be.

He was concentrating on tracking scent, the only trace that could possibly be left of the shooter. But that meant he caught the heavy tang of Foggy’s blood from three blocks away, and it just got worse as he got closer. The stench of the city was already sweeping in to bury it—a relief except that he needed _other_ scents to hold out long enough for him to track them.

Matt noted with irritation that his hands were trembling. He flexed them absently, focusing past the blood in the air (could he _taste_ it?) to catch what was beneath it.

Gunpowder.

Matt canted his head for better focus. It was definitely gunpowder, but it wasn’t the type he was used to smelling. Not the kind that clung to the uniforms of police officers, not even the kind that hung around by the docks where the gangs used each other for target practice.

Upside was, it narrowed his search. Spinning on his heel, he followed the trail in the opposite direction, moving as fast as he could before a stray breeze or some car with terrible exhaust crossed the path and muddled the scents. He shouldn’t have waited this long, he should’ve started the hunt as soon as the bullet landed….

He stayed away from streetlights and stuck to the roofs where he could…but when he heard some guy pushing his girlfriend into an empty parking lot behind a bar, Matt focused his shaking hands on breaking three of the guy’s ribs with extreme prejudice. Bit harsher than his normal approach, but he wasn’t feeling very apologetic about it.

The young woman stumbled backwards away from him, clapped her hands to her mouth like she was trying not to throw up. The slight scent of the drug on her breath, odorless to anyone else, made Matt grit his teeth. “He was just—he was—”

Matt tried to keep the anger out of his voice, leaving it strained instead. “He put something in your drink.”

He tasted the salt of her tears on the back of his tongue. “But—but we—”

“Do you have someone to take you to the hospital?”

“No, no, I don’t—” She choked on a sob. “I don’t want that.”

Another night, Matt might’ve discussed that, talked about her options. But tonight there really wasn’t time. “Do you have someone to call?”

“A friend,” she whispered.

“You should go back in the bar. Stay with someone until your friend comes.” He shouldn’t leave her. He had to leave. He didn’t know how much time he had. He turned away.

“Wait!” she burst out, taking a brave step towards him. “Will—will—” The words were slurred but insistent. “Will you stay with me?”

Matt turned back. “What?”

Swallowing, she spoke slowly and almost clearly: “Will you stay with me.”

“I—” _Can’t._ He couldn’t say that, not to her. “Call your friend.”

Her hands were over her mouth again, almost muffling her words: “ _Please don’t leave me_.”

Matt swore under his breath, breathing too hard considering he hadn’t even broken a sweat taking down her assailant. But he nodded jerkily. “All right. I’ll stay.”

“Thank you,” she breathed, skirting around the unconscious body on the ground to sit with her back pressed to the wall of the bar. He heard her call her friend, explain through stutters and not enough oxygen what happened. He heard her friend ask if she was safe. He heard her say, “I’m with Daredevil,” in response, as if…as if in reassurance.

The friend promised to be there in five and hung up. The girl didn’t say anything. Nor did Matt; his reputation worked better when he was just a faceless mask, not a person who made conversation outside a bar. Besides, he couldn’t think of anything he could say that might help her—and he could think of a lot of things he might say that’d make things worse. So he just sat there, thinking about what it’d take to prosecute the bad guy if she wanted to go that route. She could ID him, obviously, but if she didn’t get to a hospital soon, the drugs wouldn’t be caught and he hadn’t otherwise left a mark. But maybe this guy had done this before, maybe there were other complaints against him, maybe cumulatively it would be enough….

If he was a repeat offender, Matt should do more permanent damage in case he tried something like this again. He should at least wait for the guy to wake up and make him turn himself in.

But then the girl’s friend arrived, heartbeat stuttering when she noticed Matt in the shadows, and Matt really didn’t want to stay in one place a second longer. Feeling like a cheap excuse for a hero, he jumped from the overflowing dumpster onto the bar’s roof, seeking relief in the city skyline.

The wind whipped at the tendrils of his mask as the trail took him towards the outskirts of the city, the scent of gunpowder still there for him to find it, but it was fading fast. To his nose, anyway. He distracted the half of his brain that wasn’t focused on chasing the trail with wondering how to train Frank to be a sniffer dog. He was just planning how to incorporate that training along with her parkour practice when he recognized the heartbeat stalking him through the shadows.

“Stone?”

The shadows did not reply.

He shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t have left Dex unsupervised, but Matt didn’t have time for another conversation. And, for some reason, Matt didn’t really want to send Stone away. So he just kept going, listening to the near-silent parallel footsteps, until they arrived outside a military base, outside a thick wall that crackled with electricity overhead.

Well, that checked out. Stone said something about Fisk’s new lawyer having some kind of military connection. Matt still wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, although he bet Karen could figure it out if she had enough time.

Or he could just get answers the old-fashioned way.

Matt had never been on a military base before, and he instantly decided that he never wanted to go near one again. Even from outside, even at night, the array of stimulation was an onslaught. The hum of hundreds of different machines. Conversations so studded with lingo that they may as well have been in a foreign language. The air smelled of smoke, burnt rubber, fake microwaved food, and metal. Lots of metal.

Matt stepped closer to the wall.

But what was he gonna do, camp out here? Wait for his target to waltz out? He didn’t even know who his target _was_. Half the people in there probably smelled like that gunpowder. What was he gonna do, punch each of them until someone confessed?

And set the national guard on a manhunt for the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Great plan.

Reality didn’t set in peacefully. It wasn’t particularly stealthy, either; Matt recognized the truth long before it crashed into him. But when it did crash, all its weight punched into Matt’s gut like a fist. He grabbed a baton and threw it across the road, barely locking a yell behind his teeth.

Stupid, _stupid_.

And then, of course, he had to skulk across the road like an idiot to retrieve his baton. He _was_ an idiot. After everything Stick taught him, he couldn’t even say he hadn’t seen this coming. But apparently all the training and anticipation in the world hadn’t been enough. If Matt couldn’t keep Foggy safe when he was _in the same room_ , what was….

What was even the point.

Foggy deserved so much better.

Stone was now perched on a building across the road, some kind of office placed like an afterthought just outside the base walls. Matt could practically taste his disdain. “Stone,” he said tiredly. “Go away.”

“No,” Stone’s voice answered.

Whatever.

Holstering his baton, Matt turned back the way he’d come, telling himself this hadn’t been a waste. It had been, obviously, but he could still break into Fisk’s cell and get back to Karen’s before morning. Probably. Unless he had to beg Claire for medical help afterwards, which he _wouldn’t_ because this time his goal was crystal clear.

Stone finally dropped down to walk beside him. “Where are you going?”

Matt didn’t stop. “You know where.”

“All right, I do.” Stone pulled out a knife, spinning it in anticipation. “And what do you think you’re going to do once you get there?”

He clenched his jaw.

“Matty.”

He ignored him.

“ _Matty_.” And suddenly, Stone’s hand was on his shoulder.

Matt whipped around. “What are you even doing here? Where’s Dex?”

“With your mother.”

What, _alone?_ “You just left him with her? He could kill her!” Matt spun around, only to jerk backwards when Stone grabbed the back of his shirt.

“Calm down, _cretino_. Your mother can handle Dex. Trust me. And Dex definitely wants to hear what she has to say. They’ll be fine.”

“Whose idea was this?” Matt snarled.

“Karen’s.”

That sapped the heat out of him. “Karen’s?”

“She texted me, ordering me to keep an eye on you. When I pointed out the hazards of leaving Dex unattended, she reached out to Sister Maggie, who agreed to stay with Dex, at which point I dropped Dex off at your church and went hunting. You’re never hard to find.” Then he held up his phone. “And she gave me the phone number of one Micah Vallier with instructions to call him if you don’t listen to me. Seems to think his disapproval means something to you.”

Matt felt dizzy at the sheer amount of coordination behind this moment. “And Melvin?”

“Melvin won’t do anything criminal that could jeopardize Betsy’s case. He won’t be a problem.”

“Okay. Good.” Matt quickened his pace.

Not quick enough to cut off conversation, apparently. “I’d say you have two options,” Stone said idly, effortlessly keeping pace. “You could infiltrate Fisk’s cell and beat him into a bloody pulp, which won’t accomplish anything except waste taxpayer dollars on his medical care since there’s no way to stop him short of killing him, and you’re not going to kill him—I said you _won’t_ , not that you don’t want to. Or, you could do to Fisk what he’s been doing to you and methodically take out everyone he relies on.”

Matt stopped. He couldn’t get to the shooter. But… “The lawyer.”

Stone held up his phone. “Got the address right here. Home address, specifically. Your Karen is frighteningly good at finding people.”

A public records search. He remembered sitting together in the office to teach her that, making her swear to use it for good rather than evil. A small ember of pride stirred.

Stone leaned closer. “Listen,” he murmured. “I don’t need to tell you what’ll happen if Daredevil breaks into Fisk’s cell the night after Franklin Nelson’s attack. But when the time does come to kill Fisk, I’ll be there. Holding his head back for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why do I insist on doing Matt POVs when everything’s sad? Everyone knows Matt POVs just make sad things sadder.
> 
> Regardless, I need you to know that I did all this research on gunpowder and found out that long-distance rifles tend to use a particular kind that has a high percentage of nitrocellulose, which is what Matt recognizes although he doesn’t know the name. More importantly, nitrocellulose is apparently also used as a finisher on guitars? So…so what I’m saying here is that if someone had walked by the crime scene with their fancy guitar, Matt might’ve tracked down a random musician instead of a sniper.
> 
> Finally, shoutout to whatsanaccounttoagod for wanting Ella to teach Matt how to just enjoy ice cream again which is the cutest idea ever, so I'm trying to set that up here. And is this a nod to "Rescue Flare" by Lazarov? For sure, because that fic is painfully beautiful and beautifully painful.


	21. Invincible

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Unstoppable" by Red (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxRxGd5PcPg) which is such a great thematic song imo.

Maggie

She was outside under the streetlights when Stone arrived with Dex, up to her elbows soil planting flowers in the front yard of the church. Midnight gardening probably wasn’t the healthiest thing she could do, or the safest, but she enjoyed it. And the crimes that Matthew hunted at night tended to stay away from the church. She hadn’t run into trouble yet, and she cherished the solitude too much to give it up.

She didn’t mind keeping Dex outside, either. After what he’d done in the church…well, better not to think of that right now.

“You said you wanted help?” Dex asked as soon as Stone was gone (though possibly not out of hearing distance—she’d _learned_ her lesson on underestimating how far someone could hear). He didn’t question the lateness of the hour.

Smart of Stone to make Dex feel like he was needed, not like he was being babysat. “Gardening,” Maggie said smoothly, standing up and making a show of stretching her back. “My usual helpers are asleep, and if I try to do this whole yard myself, I won’t be able to stand up straight tomorrow.”

“My back should handle it fine.” Dex said it like he was making some kind of dark joke.

Maggie raised her eyebrows, but he didn’t explain, so she just studied him. He was in jeans and a dusty green t-shirt that shirt. It was hard to tell in the dark, but she thought it might have once belonged to Matthew. A gift, or something stolen by Stone? Either way, he wasn’t wearing anything that couldn’t handle some dirt. “In that case, you can start on these.” She handed him a plastic tray full of tulips, already blossoming in yellow, pink, red, and purple. “Plant them wherever the flowerbed looks empty.”

Getting on his knees beside her, Dex looked up and down the sidewalk lined with flowerbeds. “You’re doing all this by yourself?”

“And the yard in the back, too.” She pulled another tray of tulips closer.

“That’s a lot.”

She glanced back at him, but he didn’t look annoyed. More…thoughtful, maybe. There was a tiny crease between his eyebrows as he pulled a tulip from the packaging and plopped it into the hole he’d dug.

“Wait a moment.” She put her hand over his arm. “You have to untangle the roots before it can grow.”

Jerking his arm away from her touch like he’d been electrocuted, he narrowed his eyes at her. “What?”

“Like this.” She lifted the plant from the hole and turned over the plant to show him how the roots were currently tightly tangled in the soil the plant had been packaged in. Carefully, she began working the roots out until they were spread far enough from the plant that they could keep growing freely once planted in the soil. “See? Nothing can grow when it’s so constrained.” Then she slipped the tulip back into the hole, gently patting more soil down around it.

He plucked another tulip from the tray, making a face as he dug his fingers into the tightly-packed cone of dirt, pulling on the roots. She tried to watch him unobtrusively, planting her own tulips and only occasionally glancing over at him.

When they’d met before, he hadn’t wanted to change. Silly to think that was any different now. He simply had to cooperate with Matthew (and Stone, apparently) if he wanted to stay out of prison. Which he did, more than anything.

“Why’d you help me?” he asked suddenly. “If he’s really your son.”

She focused on the feel of the soil between her fingers and the velvety darkness surrounding her. “He is.”

“I tried to kill him, you know.”

She wasn’t a priest; she never formally heard anyone’s confessions. But part of being in the church meant sharing each other’s burdens—moral or otherwise. So she’d heard her fair share of guilt-laden whispers. And she found that the best way (the _only_ way, sometimes) to hear those things and still react in love was to separate the deeds from the person who’d done them. It was harder with Dex, but not impossible. Not yet. “We all make mistakes. If the church turned people away for their sins, I wouldn’t be here either.”

“I don’t care what the _church_ thinks. I care what _you_ think.”

She patted soil down around another tulip. “Do you really want to know?”

He turned towards her. Somehow, after only a few minutes, he’d already gotten dirt on his forehead. “Spit it out.”

“I think you deserve to be locked up and the key thrown away.”

His startled laugh was bitter.

“I also think that’s not my decision, so I’ll do my best with what I’ve got. Which, right now, means helping you however I can.”

The streetlight glinted off his eyes. “How do I know you won’t just call the cops on me if I mess up again?”

Setting aside the tulips for now, she stared back at him. “What does _mess up_ mean to you?”

“You know what.”

Of course she did. “If I think you’re going to hurt someone again, I’ll do whatever I can to stop you.”

“Kill me?” he asked curiously.

Her eyes narrowed. “Do you want that?”

“No,” he said immediately, turning his attention back to his tulips. “For the first time since—since—in a long time, I feel like I’m on solid ground again. Maybe there’s a trap door or something, but…it’ll be nice as long as it lasts, I guess.”

She closed her eyes briefly in relief. He didn’t want to throw this chance away.

“I dunno, like…I don’t hate myself. I’m not really _doing_ anything, I don’t have a job or anything, but I don’t feel…dirty.” He rubbed at his forehead, smearing more dirt over his skin. “I wanna keep trying. But you gotta understand—it’s hard.”

“I’m sure it must be,” she said gently. “Do you want some water?”

“Yeah, please. We only have about ten miles of flowerbed left.”

“That’s the spirit.” She got up and he followed after like a puppy. Cracking open the front door of the church, she flicked on the lights and headed inside, only stopping when she realized Dex was no longer beside her. She looked back and saw him frozen in the doorway, face slack and eyes wide. “Dex?”

Eyes unblinking, he turned his head just enough to stare at her, lips slightly parted. He was still expressionless, but now a tear ran down one cheek.

She gulped, quashing the impulse to rush to him. “Dex.” She took one painfully slow step closer. “Do you know where you are?”

“Clinton Church,” he bit out, his right hand clenching and unclenching at his side.

She’d seen it before, with some of the kids who’d…been through the worst. The triggers could be small—a smell, a shadow, a tone of voice or a question phrased a specific way. They’d lose track of where they were. More importantly, they’d lose track of _when_ they were. “Dex. It’s just me. We were gardening together, remember? Smell the soil on your hands.”

His nostrils flared. He wet his lips, then blinked hard. “Sister.”

“What were we planting in the flowerbeds, Dex?”

His forehead creased and his eyes fluttered closed. “Tulips. Sorry, I…”

“It’s all right.” She drew closer. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“The…the church. I was sent here.” He exhaled sharply. “But that was before. Sorry.”

That, right there, might be the closest thing she’d ever get to an apology for what he’d done to Paul. Maggie pushed that thought aside. “Before. Like…a flashback?”

His eyes hardened. “That’s what they call them, right? You think I’m crazy?”

“I think you’ve gone through more than your share of trauma,” she said lightly. “And I think sometimes the brain is too quick to try to protect us from old threats. But I’m not a psychologist.”

“Good thing, or you’d probably be dead by now.” He gave his head a shake, like he was shaking water from his ears, and started marching past her. “Which way’s the kitchen?”

“Straight ahead,” she muttered. He flashed her a thumbs-up and disappeared into the room where Paul used to sit with Matthew over lattes. (They should’ve had _years_ to drink lattes together.)

But it was only now that Dex was back to normal that she realized her heart had been pounding.

 

Stone

They used Google Maps, which turned them twice in the wrong direction. Stone couldn’t help thinking that this was why Stick always told them not to rely on soft things. It was the same with modern things that were less reliable then a person’s own senses.

When they finally found the place, they walked for what felt like half an hour just to get from the long driveway to the actual chateau. Even in the dark, the open yard was miraculous. The hummingbird fountain wasn’t _quite_ ostentatious, but it was elaborate.

“Nice place,” Stone murmured.

Matty didn’t answer.

There were four heartbeats. The lawyer’s, of course. His wife’s, according to Karen’s research. And two children. Brothers.

“Window?” Stone suggested.

Matty’s face was cold. “Front door.”

Stone couldn't help feeling intrigued. “As you wish.”

With gloved hands, Matty picked the lock in under three seconds. “Camera’s to the right,” he muttered.

“Keep your pretty face away, then.” As soon as Matty opened the door, Stone stepped smoothly forward, skewering the camera in the corner of the ceiling with a knife. That didn’t stop the wailing alarm, of course, from echoing around the foyer that seemed to be made entirely of smooth, reflective surfaces. An open space, all glazed hardwood with two ornate mirrors. It hurt, and Stone’s headache tomorrow would be tremendous, but soldiers were used to pain.

There was certainly no hint of discomfort on Matty’s face. He locked the door and started jogging up the wide stairs, neatly sidestepping the bullet that tried to meet him. Frightened heartbeats raced upstairs—the young boys were hiding in a bathroom; the mother was calling the police.

And at the top of the stairs, Lopez fired again. It was a small handgun, a nine-millimeter Glock that looked starkly out of place set against the backdrop of an expensive gray-mottled robe. Matty didn’t even slow down. His wrist flicked out and his baton knocked the gun from Lopez’s hand. Lopez stumbled back half a step, tripping on the hem of his own robe, before Matty caught him and locked his fingers around a wrist, jerking Lopez back down.

“I’m gonna give you a choice,” he said in a low voice, barely audible over the alarm. “We can do this here, or I can take you someplace where your family won’t have to hear you scream.”

“I didn’t—I didn’t—”

“All right, here’s good for me too.” Matty twisted the wrist so that Lopez doubled over with a gasp, but that wasn’t enough, so Matty brought up his other hand and deftly broke one of Lopez’s fingers. The pointer finger, it looked like. The _snap_ was loud and sharp enough to cut through the siren.

Lopez cut off his own scream with fruitless protestations. “No, stop, _wait_ —”

A kick to his legs dropped him to his knees on his expensive carpet. Matt’s masked head lowered to stay even with Lopez’s face. “I don’t know how much you know about me, Counselor. I don’t know if any of your scummy clients have let you in on how these sessions tend to go. Just think of it like a cross examination. I ask questions, and you tell me what I need to know. And you don’t lie to me.” He manipulated the broken finger, causing Lopez to hunch over himself as best he could with Matty still gripping his hand. “Nod if you understand.”

The nod was weak, but present.

“Tell me who shot Franklin Nelson.”

“I don’t know, I never—”

 _Snap_. Another broken finger, another choked-off scream. Stone would’ve thought the first break would be enough to convince him to cooperate, but then again, lawyers weren’t known for their forthrightness.

“Try again. Think about your answer. Who shot Franklin Nelson?”

The words tumbled over themselves in Lopez’s rush to answer. A name, a rank, and half a social security number before Matty interrupted him.

“Why would he shoot a civilian?”

“We promised him transportation to the Marshall Islands.” Lopez admitted shakily. “Would’ve been cheaper to just get Tower to agree not to prosecute, but not even my client could push Tower that far.”

“When?”

“The flight leaves in an hour—he was already picked up from the base thirty minutes ago.”

Matty snapped another finger.

Lopez yelped. “I was telling the truth!”

“I know.” The casual anger in Matty’s voice was something Stone had never heard before, not like this. “Why Nelson?”

Lopez’s breathing stuttered, chest rising and falling rapidly.

“If you’re thinking of lying…rethink it.”

“Fisk’s after Karen Murdock. Nelson’s her friend, that’s all he—”

 _Snap_.

Lopez was hyperventilating now. “He’s a defense lawyer! Her lawyer, most likely!”

Matty bared his teeth in a smile that Stick would’ve killed to see. “So am I.”

Lopez correctly recognized that Matty’s confirmation of his own identity signaled the danger Lopez faced, as evidenced by the smell of sweat (and urine) in the air.

“Cops are on their way,” Stone reminded Matty under his breath.

Matty spat his next question between his teeth. “What does Fisk have on Karen?”

“She’s—she’s murdered people, she’s—”

“What _evidence?_ ”

“N-nothing, just circumstantial, not—”

Matty started on Lopez’s other hand. _Snap_. “Specifics, Counselor.”

Lopez was too busy screaming and crying, turning into a blubbering mess, to answer. Stone felt his lip curl. He also heard two engines approaching outside. No sirens, could be neighbors. “Matty,” he warned anyway, just in case. Matty certainly didn’t look like he was listening to anything but Lopez.

“Who else is Fisk gonna hurt before he moves against Karen?” Matty demanded.

“He—he just—he just—” Lopez gasped for breath. “Just—n-needed to know her lawyers were distracted.”

“ _Who else?_ ”

“I don’t _know!_ Not my job!”

Tires crunched over the gravel outside. “Matty,” Stone hissed.

Matty ignored him. “What evidence does Fisk have on Karen?”

“V-video— _augh_ —from Vanessa’s gallery…”

“What else?”

Footsteps outside. Four pairs splitting up. “Matty,” Stone barked.

 _Snap._ “What else?”

A knock on the front door. “NYPD,” a woman’s voice said. “Identify yourself.”

Matty drew his arm back and for a moment Stone thought they were done here, but then the fist flashed out and the _crack_ of Lopez’s jaw breaking rang through the stairway. For a moment, Matty stood still, as if savoring Lopez’s garbled wail. Then, dropping the other lawyer like a ragdoll, he snatched up his baton and hurried back down the stairs. “Police are moving around back,” he said crisply, dispassionately. “Grab your knife. Don’t leave fingerprints.”

Stone threw another knife to dislodge the first. Same principle as helping Giovanni recover balls stuck in trees by throwing other balls at them. Then he was following Matty through the twisted corridors of the house, but Matty ignored each window they passed. A crashing sound told Stone that the police had broken through the heavy front doors, shouting at one another to be heard over the still-ringing alarm.

Stone kept close on Matty’s tail. “What’re you looking for?”

“Office.” He wound his way down the hallways like he’d been born in this place. “Plant a false trail, will you?”

Backtracking obediently, Stone ducked into one of the hundreds of spare rooms—this one holding an ornate piano—and dug his knife into one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. Glass shattered musically. He ran the tip of his knife along the side of the piano as he flitted back to Matty’s side.

Matty had found the office and was rifling through a briefcase open on the desk. Lifting his head once Stone entered the room, he stepped back and gestured annoyedly at the mess of papers. “Look through that and pull out anything pertaining to Fisk, Karen, or me.”

“You don’t tell me what to do,” Stone reminded him, looking through the papers and pulling out any that referred to Fisk, Karen, or Matty.

“If it’s about Karen or me, steal it. If it’s about Fisk, leave it front and center so the police find it. There’s gotta be something incriminating.”

Stone did as instructed, sorting rapidly through the documents while keeping his ears trained on the hallway. The police had finally shut off the alarm, which was lovely. They’d also found the broken window and were spreading themselves thin to follow the lead.

“Good enough,” Matty announced suddenly, brushing past Stone and wedging open the office window. He kicked through the screen behind the glass. “We need to leave.”

“Agreed.” Folding the papers and sticking them in his belt, Stone slipped out the window behind him and tossed the screen behind a thick rosebush before sliding the window closed once more. Matty had already sprinted silently across the lawn to a trellised wall separating Lopez’s property from the neighbor’s. Stone caught up, climbing the wall and dropping onto the next yard beside him, frowning in surprise when Matty slunk towards the road instead of using the ornate fountain (this one in the shape of a bear) to get to the roof. “Is there a reason we’re staying at ground level?” Stone hissed.

“If the police think Daredevil’s involved, the roofs are the first place they’ll look.”

Stone cursed quietly, more out of annoyance than frustration. “This is so _tedious_. Don’t step on that lawn gnome.”

Matty didn’t respond. He kept going as if tied by strings pulling him ceaselessly in one direction with no chance to slow down or look back. They were certainly out of range of the cops by now, but Matty still didn’t falter.

Until, suddenly, he stopped dead. “I can feel you staring at me.”

“Unlikely.” Stone stopped too, waiting.

Slowly, Matty turned around, chin lifted slightly in something like defiance.

Stone raised his hands between them. “I’m surprised, that’s all. Your brutality with the lawyer was unexpected. Don’t bite my head off.”

“We didn’t exactly have much time to ask politely,” Matty gritted out.

“You didn’t break his jaw because you wanted him to talk.”

“Maybe that’s the point, maybe I didn’t want him talking to the police.”

Stone raised his eyebrows and waited in pointed silence.

Matty held his position for about three seconds before tossing his head. “Broken fingers means he can’t write or do research. Broken jaw means he can’t talk.” He showed his teeth in a smile. “He’s a lawyer. So.”

Stone smiled back. “Sounds disruptive.”

“Something like that, yeah.”

Then Stone waited. Not because he thought Matty had a plan but because he at least assumed Matty had a next move.

Sure enough: “Get back to Dex. I’m gonna go over everything we got with Karen. Make sure she’s…make sure she’s ready.” He held out his hand for the papers. “Can I see those?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

His answering chuckle was the first thing he’d done all night that felt familiar. He accepted the papers, then shifted his weight almost hesitantly. Even with the mask covering the top half of his face, Stone assumed his eyes were averted. “Thank you, by the way,” he said quietly.  “For—for all of this.”

Shrugging, Stone glanced away to avoid seeing the earnestness communicated not in Matty’s sightless eyes but in the nervous twitching of his hand at his side. “It was fun. You know I’ll always be around if you need me.”

“Do I know that?” He let that sentence hang in the air for a second. “Why’d you leave, Stone? Why’d you leave Hell’s Kitchen? And don’t say it was the Hand or whatever,” he added more sharply. “This whole time you’ve been back, you haven’t been tracking them at all—”

“You don’t know that.”

Matty just cocked his head pointedly at the flutter of Stone’s heartbeat.

Stone sighed heavily. He didn’t owe Matty an explanation. He certainly didn’t need to remind Matty of the picture Ella had given him, the picture that was the first useless and nonlethal thing anyone had given him since…since he could remember.

When the silence stretched out, Matty changed tact. “All right, so why’d you come back?”

“Does it matter? Just be grateful I did.”

“It matters,” Matty said flatly.

“The Hand. I thought Devil’s Hell might—”

“Why’d you _stay_ , Stone?”

Stone rolled his eyes desperately. “Because you needed my help.”

Matty’s voice turned soft as silk. “That’s not the only reason.”

Stone started walking again. “Go keep your wife out of jail, Matty.”

 

The sun was just rising by the time he made it to the hospital. Glinting off the hard edges of buildings, waking up hundreds of thousands civilians to the routine of their boring little lives. It wasn’t as if such boredom actually protected them, or the people they softened themselves for. The fact that there was a need for a Daredevil was proof sufficient of that. It made their lives seem doubly ill-spent.

That much could certainly be said of Nelson. A bullet in the head, and he didn’t even get the thrill of combat to justify it.

If anyone asked, Stone would say he was there to offer protection. Maybe Nelson’s shooter really was halfway to an island hideaway by now, but that didn’t mean someone else wouldn’t show up to finish the job.

Stone, however, did not enjoy lying to himself.

He slipped into the lawyer’s room without incident; it wasn’t hard to avoid detection when he could overhear the hospital staff’s communication despite the lingering ringing in his ears from Lopez’s alarm. However, he was not entirely prepared for the scene that awaited him.

The room was relatively small, with the bed and its array of machines and wires taking up the majority of the space. Two wooden chairs sat in the corner, with thin cushions smelling of antiseptic and a thousand strangers’ perfumes and colognes and cigarettes. The heart monitor beeped sluggishly. Stone stepped forward, unable to pull his eyes away from the machinery. So much effort to keep one man alive. So much vulnerability in one place. Pull a plug, hit a button, cut the power, block a signal…and it would be over. And so much _expense_.

War was costly. Stick would never go to such expense to keep one person alive. Certainly not someone with a name like Foggy.

He dragged his eyes over to the lawyer’s supine figure and wished he hadn’t. Hair shaved, face bloodless, eyes closed, skin punctured with needles and tubes. Stone had never confronted anything so utterly _dependent_.

He did not want to move anywhere closer to the bed, but he wasn’t sure how well Nelson could hear right now, so he raised his voice from where he stood in the doorway. “I suppose you can hear me, Nelson. I don’t, however, suppose that there’s much I can say that you’ll find helpful. But it sounds to me like you’re very fortunate to be alive.” He looked again at the mess of wires and tubes, thought again about the fact that the extent of the damage was still unknown, and he shrugged. “Or perhaps not.”

Why was he here, again?

“You must be glad that Matty was there. And the kid. Kept you alive.” Stone rubbed at the back of his neck. “I—I’m sorry I wasn’t.”

He’d had enough to worry about, of course, with Melvin and Dex. That was precisely the problem. Too many people, too many vulnerable people to keep track of at once.

“I don’t know how much you know about Stick, Nelson, but he would not be surprised by what happened to you. I wonder if Matty is? I doubt it. I imagine he’s been anticipating this moment for years. Since he met you, more or less.”

Nelson didn’t react, didn’t give the slightest hint that he’d heard or understood, but Stone wondered for a heartbeat if he should perhaps have kept that thought to himself.

“You’re important to him. I’m sure you know that.” Stone paused. “Then again, maybe you don’t. You’re clearly friends, you run a business together, you know about Daredevil—but did he tell you, or did you find out on your own? Still. All of that could be for practical reasons. Nothing personal.”

He cleared his throat. “But I don’t think that’s the case. He needs you—that’s clear to me. Well…he needs you, but not in the way most people think of necessity.”

“Stone?”

He didn’t turn around as Claire stepped into the room behind him. He hadn’t heard her approach, had been too focused on one thing. He did not tell her that.

“What’re you doing in here?” She closed the door behind them. She sounded like she was tired but pretending not to be.

“Making sure nothing’s wrong.”

She stood beside him now, arms folded. “A lot of things are wrong, but nothing’s urgent.”

“I didn’t, ah…” He glanced askance at her, briefly taking in her dark blue scrubs. A nice color. “I never thanked you.”

“For?”

Did she really not remember? He supposed that made sense. She saved people every day, every hour. Why should he stand out? “Devil’s hell.”

“Oh, right.” She shrugged. “We’re getting pretty good at dealing with it, I’d say. Not that people aren’t still hurting from it, but…everyone knows the symptoms now, so they’re getting people in for treatment sooner, and we’re stocked up on—” She cut herself off. “Sorry. You don’t care.”

He did, actually.

“Anyway, you hear anything particularly alarming?”

He was confused until she jerked her thumb towards the lawyer’s bed. “Uh, no.” That wasn’t strictly true. The entire scene was alarming.

“No grinding, no old ships?”

“Excuse me?”

“You know.” She put her hands in the air, miming…something. “Whatever broken bones sound like. Matt said a hairline fracture sounds like an old ship.”

Interesting referent. “Does it bother you?” Stone asked more quietly. “The abilities we have.”

It was Claire’s turn to glance sideways at him. “I’ve had plenty of time to get used to it.”

Stone smiled grimly. “That may be, but that’s not what I asked.”

“Matt was smelling cologne through walls literally the night I met him. It was weird, but it didn’t bother me.”

“You don’t think it serves as an…unfair advantage?”

The look she gave him was positively dangerous. “If anything, I’d say the playing field is tilted in my favor.”

Turning to face her, he risked a step closer. “How so?”

She didn’t back down. “For one thing, I have the knowledge to severely incapacitate you, and here in this hospital I have more resources than I’d ever need to do it.”

He didn’t dare grab her wrist. He didn’t need to. If she’d seen Matty in action, then she must have some sense of how fast he was. “If you could get to any of them in time.”

“I could,” she said calmly. “I’d wait for when you’re distracted. By Matt, or Foggy, or Karen…”

It was jarring how easily she echoed Stick’s warnings.

“But I wouldn’t need to stab you with a needle myself if I wanted to incapacitate you. Not with your whole…” She waved her hand vaguely. “Two-and-a-half friends thing.”

He felt his eyebrows shoot up. “Excuse me?”

She lifted her chin. “All your friends were my friends first. You hurt me, you start World War Three.”

He couldn’t argue with that, but she didn’t need to know how glad he was for it.

“You should work on that,” she said bluntly. “Getting friends.”

“My world is too complicated already.” He had _enough_ to do without relearning how to have mutual relationships not designed ad hoc for the accomplishment of a particular mission. Like learn a whole new nonlethal fighting style. And continue convincing himself that guarding Dex and Melvin (and Ella and Karen and even Nelson, apparently) was worth it even though he and Matty were more effective when it was only the two of them. The last thing Stone needed was to add one more thing to his to-do list.

She looked at him, then dragged her gaze over to Nelson’s bed. “That’s why you came here, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it terrible that I miss Matt torturing people?


	22. The Rose that Grew from the Cracks in the Concrete

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "The Rose" by Memphis May Fire (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx5DQE9q__8).

Karen

She’d figured, before falling asleep, that she’d be lucky to get more than five hours of sleep that night despite the fact that the Valliers’ couch was actually quite comfortable. Sure enough, she snapped awake at five-thirty in the morning, her brain racing too fast for her to even realize what she was thinking about.

After a second, it slowed down enough that she could sort through everything. She’d dreamed about Foggy, so the sinking feeling in her stomach was regret that it wasn’t real. And she’d noticed the distinct lack of Matt’s comforting warmth on the couch behind her, so her racing heart was because _he should be back by now_.

There was no way she’d fall back asleep, so she dragged herself off the couch, pushing her hair out of her face. The curtains were glowing faintly in the morning light, but she still had to feel around to find clothes to change into. Smoothing her shirt down to make sure she’d put it on the right direction, she felt it: a slight bump.

_Whoa._

With two hands, she carefully traced the outline, wondering how she could’ve missed this. It wasn’t much of a bump, sure. Easily concealed by clothes, although her usual tight outfits might give her away. But _still._

She wasn’t sure how long she stood there, running her hands over her stomach. But she suddenly realized it was maybe a bit weird, and she was hungry— _definitely_ eating for two now—so she padded into the kitchen, turned on the light, and stopped in the doorway.

Matt was slumped at the table, still dressed in black although his mask and gloves were on the table beside him. He was resting his head on his arms folded across a mess of documents and she could see the glint of his ring under the light. When she got closer to investigate, she heard a muted sound: a tiny, mechanical voice drifting up from his phone, not the burner, which peeked out from under one arm.

“ _The grouping of the seven shots scattered across James Wesley’s chest coupled with the angle of the bullets indicates that the shots were fired at a close range by an amateur or an individual otherwise inhibited—_ ”

Mouth dry, Karen fished the phone out from under his arm and shut it off. Her eyes dropped down to the documents. News articles, witness statements, _medical reports_ ….

“Good morning,” a voice said behind her.

Karen whirled around, drawing her hands up to her cheeks with elbows tucked in like Matt taught her, but it was just Maeva standing in the doorway in jeans and a purple shirt, her empty hands held up as if to show that she was unarmed. Karen immediately relaxed her stance, setting Matt’s phone carefully back down on the table. “Sorry. You startled me.”

“I can’t blame you for being on edge.” Maeva’s eyes quickly took in Matt’s clothes. “He went out last night.”

Karen shifted slightly to block Maeva’s view of most of the papers. “He doesn’t look injured or anything, though. Not even bloody knuckles. Must’ve been a good night.”

“Hmm. You want coffee? Or will that wake him up?”

It suddenly occurred to her that the Valliers had lives of their own. “It’s fine. We’ll get out of your way.”

Maeva gave a small smile. “We can have our coffee a little late if it means he gets more rest. It looks like he needs it. And frankly, we’re all better off if he’s at the top of his game.”

“You guys will be fine,” Karen said confidently.

Maeva’s smile twitched like she appreciated the sentiment. Then her head turned. “Oh, no. Ella’s up.”

“You sure? I don’t hear—”

“You’ll start recognizing the noises once your kid is here,” Maeva predicted. “She’s normally a little slug in the morning, but if she remembers you two are here…”

Thus began the stampede.

Ella’s footsteps thundered down the stairs and Matt jerked awake with a quiet noise of distress, surging to his feet. Karen put a hand on his chest _just in case_ whatever he’d been doing last night was still at the front of his mind.

Ella burst into the room in lemon-drop-yellow pajamas that still looked new, her thick hair sticking up all around her face. “You’re still here!” she trilled. She plopped down at the table, screwing her eyes up at the mess of papers. “What’s all this?”

“Homework,” Matt blurted out, scrambling to sweep it all into a pile. “Boring, boring homework. Don’t worry about it.”

If the way her eyes lit up was any indication, the documents just became about ten times more interesting. She slid a hand across the table like she expected to avoid Matt’s senses. Matt brought his hand down swiftly over hers and Karen swore they actually locked eyes for a split second.

“Is…is this why I had to stay with Grandma?”

Intuitive little creature.

“We were just being careful,” Matt explained.

“Should I probably not go to school, then, maybe?” she asked slyly.

“You’re still going to summer school,” Maeva cut in, prompting Karen to remember that the world hadn’t actually stopped spinning. It was a regular day. A workday. Technically, Matt and Foggy still had clients. So why did it feel like she was dreaming? “Go put on actual clothes.”

Ella seemed to know better than to push her luck because she trounced upstairs without any more resistance.

Maeva glanced sheepishly at Karen and Matt. “I’m sorry about that. We have her signed up for this summer camp and I swear she really likes it, but she'd rather hang out with you two. She doesn’t understand what’s going on and what happened to Foggy. Not really.”

Karen listened to the sounds of Ella noisily getting ready upstairs. “Would it help to see him? I mean…it’d be hard, obviously. But she’d see all the things keeping him alive and she’d know where he is.” It would be real.

“You don’t mind?”

The truth was, Karen wanted to see him too, and she couldn’t help thinking that it’d be easier, less intense, with more people. Maybe. “We could all go.”

Maeva looked relieved. “Thank you. I think that’ll help. I’ll go tell her to hurry while you…um.” She disappeared up the stairs.

Sweet of her to give them a few seconds alone, although it just reinforced the fact that this living situation wasn’t sustainable. Karen turned her attention to Matt. “Are you hurt?”

He shook his head.

“Where were you last night?”

“Lopez’s place. Just going through his work-product.”

He almost managed to make it sound like a consensual arrangement. She studied his face. “Bring me up to speed.”

He nodded, slipping into that careful voice he used when feeling out a new case. “Fisk’s physical resources are stretched thin. The guy he sent after Foggy left the country. Maybe he has other hitmen available, but Fisk’s leverage seems to come primarily from his hold over Tower at this point. When that social capital runs dry, I’m not sure what else Fisk can threaten us with. Physically.”

“So we can all come down off high alert?”

“I don’t know. I hope so. I think the only person Fisk could possibly manipulate on his own, without Tower, is Melvin. But if I take a day or two to sort out Betsy, Fisk won’t have anything there. I think…” He chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment. “I think the only person we really need to worry about protecting now is, uh…my mom. Since Fisk knows who she is.”

“If I’m the target, why does Fisk care about your mom?”

“Because he wants me rattled. Because I’m your lawyer. Well.” He shot her a hopeful look. “I like to think I’m your lawyer.”

Of _course_ he was her lawyer. “And you’re sure I, you know…need a lawyer?” She couldn’t help wishing Fisk would be too overwhelmed to go through the legal system. Somehow, facing a guy with a gun was far less scary than facing a jury of twelve.

Matt jerked his head back at the documents on the table. “All that is stuff I found from Lopez. Notes. I’ve been listening through them.” He briefly pressed his lips into an uncomfortable line. “It’s mostly about you. They want to charge you with Vanessa’s murder. And, if they can get away with it…also Wesley’s.”

She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry, Matt.”

“You _don’t_ have to apologize. And we’re gonna deal with this, all right? We’re gonna go through everything they have and figure out how to—”

“I know. I trust you.” Opening her eyes, she forced a smile. “It’s not like you do this for a living or anything, right?”

“Right. But, uh…” He shifted closer. “Maybe, for the time being, you could consider taking a page out of Lopez’s book and going somewhere with no extradition agreement?”

“Only if I get to shoot the guy who shot Foggy.”

“That’s not funny.”

Hadn’t been a joke. She bit her lip. “I have a life here, Matt.”

He sighed. “Why is everyone I care about so outrageously stubborn?”

“I don’t know, maybe you’re contagious.”

Now he quirked a grin at her. “Fair point.” He moved back to the stack of documents, a stack she’d rather forget existed. “The good news is, we have time. Even with all of this, Lopez still has to convince Tower to formally charge you, which might be…difficult for him, right now. Not to mention the fact that Tower is clearly nervous about how much of his involvement with Reyes’ corruption you might make public if he pushes you. We should have plenty of time to build up a credible defense.”

“If it exists,” she muttered.

“We’ll figure it out,” he insisted more gently. “Together. I swear.”

“How’d you get all this stuff, anyway?”

His expression instantly became shuttered. “Lopez. I told you.”

Humming, she ran her fingers lightly over the knuckles of his left hand. Not bloody, but she could tell in the better light that they were bruised. “I’m thinking he took some convincing.”

Matt’s sightless eyes flicked over her face. “Do you want to know?”

“I don’t need to know. I trust you did what you had to.”

“Right.” He didn’t look reassured. “I, uh…” He flexed his hand. “I don’t think Foggy would’ve approved.”

Foggy wasn’t there, that was the _point_. She tried to think of something helpful to say. Tricky, since she didn’t care what he’d done except to the extent that _he_ cared, and she wasn’t sure how much he cared except to the extent that Foggy cared. “You could, I don’t know…talk to your priest about it?”

“I’d rather not.” He changed the subject. “Thank you, though.”

“For?”

“For letting me go last night. And…for sending Stone after me.”

“He found you?” Not that he’d done her the courtesy of letting her know.

“Yeah,” Matt said, and didn’t elaborate.

 

The Valliers waited in the hallway so Matt and Karen could go in first, but Matt stopped in the doorway of the hospital room. Foggy’s hospital room. Where Foggy was lying on a bed all but buried under wires with part of his hair shaved off and a bandage trying to cover the evidence of what had been done to him.

“Stone was here,” Matt breathed.

“Was there a problem?” Karen asked. And then started wondering when, exactly, she’d stopped assuming that Stone’s presence was its own problem.

“Doesn’t smell like it.” Matt took a cautious step deeper into the room. The swing of his cane in front of his legs didn’t seem to be for show. Like he was actually worried he’d trip over something vital to keeping Foggy alive. Karen held out her arm and his fingers brushed against her elbow so she could lead them both up to the edge of the bed. As soon as his knees touched the bed, he let go of her elbow to hold onto his cane with both hands.

“Hi, Foggy,” Karen managed, wrapping her arms tightly around herself. “Hi, um…” Her voice cracked. “The nurses say you might be able to hear us, so, um…we just wanted to come by and talk.” She paused, glancing back at Matt. His throat moved like he was trying to say something, but he ended up just nodding. Reaching for his hand, she tugged him closer. “So, yeah. Not much has changed since, um…but we’ll let you know. Promise.”

“The Murphy case,” Matt blurted out. “I got a bunch of emails in from discovery, finally. I’d, uh…I’d save them for you to look at it, but I know how you feel about emails.”

Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She glanced at it, saw Ellison’s name flash across the screen, and stuffed her phone back in her pocket. She couldn’t stand one more sympathetic voice right now.

“We’ve been staying with the Valliers,” Matt went on, face aimed down at his own feet. “They’re…they wanna see you. Brace yourself, Fogs.”

Karen couldn’t help feeling relieved. This stilted, one-sided conversation was _awful_. Where was Foggy’s sarcasm? His quips? His damn _personality?_

At least the room wouldn’t be so quiet once Ella burst in.

Looking over her shoulder, Karen gestured at the Valliers huddled in the hall. They moved closer like a single unit and as soon as Ella’s round eyes landed on Foggy, on the bed, on all the wires, she bumped backwards against Micah’s leg. “Is he gonna be okay?”

“Yes,” Karen said immediately.

“Karen,” Matt said very softly.

No. Just no. She wasn’t about to discuss the possibility that Foggy didn’t make it with _anyone_ , let alone a room with four other people. No.

Ella turned on Matt. “Do you know who did this?”

“He’s gone, Ella,” Matt told her.

Her eyebrows drew tight together in a fierce glare. “What do you mean, _gone_?”

“He’s left the country.”

“But how do you know?”

“Because I talked to the person who hired him to do it.”

“You punished him, right?” she demanded immediately.

“I didn’t—no, I just…” Matt’s voice trailed off.

“Will you teach me?”

“Teach you what?” he asked gingerly.

“How to do whatever you did to the person who hired the guy who hurt Foggy.”

“ _No_.”

“Ella,” Micah tried to intervene.

Anger flashed in her dark eyes. “I wanna _help_.”

“This is not helping,” Matt muttered.

She folded her arms tightly across her chest and her glare worsened.

Matt shot a helpless look back towards Karen, but she shook her head. Anything she said to diffuse the situation wouldn’t mean anything to Ella, not when _Matt_ was the one teaching her self-defense and _Matt_ was the one who’d saved her so many times now.

Finally, Matt turned back to Ella. “They’re other ways to help besides hurting bad guys,” Matt told her firmly.

For a seven-year-old, she looked impossibly patronizing. Like she knew Matt was trying very hard to sound like a Reasonable Adult and wanted him to feel like he was succeeding. “Uh-huh.”

“I’m serious, Ella.”

“Like what?” she challenged.

Here, maybe Karen could help. “You could make something for Foggy. Something to make his room look nicer.”

Now Ella aimed her glare Karen, but her eyes were watery. “He can’t _see_.”

“I’d say you’re pretty good at working around that,” Matt pointed out. “Beside, he might still be able to hear. You can make a recording for him. Like telling him about one of your worlds.”

She scuffed at the floor with the heel of her shoe. Not satisfied, but out of arguments.

Crisis averted. For now.

 

They couldn’t stay with the Valliers forever, which left them to decide where else to stay. Stone’s place was still an option, but there was Frank to think of. And neither Matt nor Karen wanted to split up anymore.

Logically, it made sense (she hoped). Fisk took his shot with Foggy and now his hitman was gone, and Lopez’s notes made it clear that Fisk’s strategy against Karen was to use handcuffs, not a bullet. So of course she should spend as much time as possible with Matt to figure out her defense.

Really, she just wanted to go _home_.

As soon as he set all their bags down in the bedroom, she pressed her body against him and backed him up against the nearest wall. The kisses were quick and desperate and she was much more interested in grounding herself with the _feel_ of him. Solid and strong and dangerous. He kissed her back like he was drowning and she was oxygen, one hand cupping the base of her head and the other pulling her more tightly against himself.

Eventually, she broke away to just rest her chin on his shoulder.

“That was nice,” Matt said, voice a bit rougher than normal.

“Well, we’re no longer being watched by a seven-year-old, so.” She stepped back.

“Good thinking.” He kissed her again, softer and less urgent. “How’re you feeling?”

“I didn’t throw up this morning, so I’m counting that as a win.” She dug her laptop bag out of the pile of all their stuff. “Kinda feel like I could sleep for a week, though.”

Laughing quietly, he sat cross-legged on the bed, closing his eyes. “Same, although my excuse isn’t as good as yours.”

“I feel like chasing snipers around town is a great excuse, actually.” She’d planned to go back out to the living room with her laptop, but he looked so immediately peaceful that she lingered. He almost looked like he was meditating, but his posture wasn’t as rigidly perfect as usual. If not meditating then, what, praying? Or just…thinking? She supposed he had to do that sometime, even though there wasn’t always much evidence of it. She itched to ask what he was doing, but when he let out a slow breath it seemed unfair to interrupt him just to satisfy her own curiosity.

One of his hands moved to touch the bed beside him. “You can stay, if you want,” he offered, eyes still closed.

His voice was neutral; she couldn’t quite tell if he was offering out of politeness or because he actually wanted her close to him. “You don’t mind?”

“This may come as a surprise to you, but I actually really enjoy your company.”

Rolling her eyes, she joined him on the bed and opened up her laptop. Since he couldn’t see what she was looking at, she pulled up her old notes on Frank Castle’s case. It would make more sense, probably, to look at John Healy’s defense. But Wesley’s face flashed across her mind and…it just hit a bit too close to home.

So she scrolled through pages and pages of notes on the insanity defense and tried to ignore the sinking feeling in her gut because she’d known _exactly_ what she was doing when she shot Vanessa.

“Karen,” he murmured.

She flinched. “What?”

His eyes opened. “You tensed up. What are you looking at?”

“Nothing. Research.” She pushed her laptop away. “What were you doing?”

He gave her what basically amounted to a long, searching look, but he didn’t push. “Talking to God.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You mean praying?”

“I guess.” He sat up. “It sounds too formal, though, calling it that. And I get that God is, you know…omnipotent and omniscient and the judge of all the good and bad that we do…”

She frowned at the judging part.

“But if God is also, um, fatherlike…I figured I should tell Him about…things.”

“What kind of things?” she asked carefully.

He shrugged, expression darkening.

Maybe this was good. Maybe this was a weird, Catholic way to process his experiences, including whatever he’d done to Lopez that he clearly felt guilty about. Or maybe it was a justification for sitting in silence and dwelling on all the things he couldn’t change. “Does it help?”

“Probably too soon to tell.”

“You should ask God what sex our baby is,” she suggested lightly.

The brooding expression vanished, replaced by something cockier. “Oh, I already know she’s a girl.”

Karen’s stomach flipped. “Wait, seriously? Can you, like, smell it or something?”

He grinned. “Nah. I just know.”

“You’re such a _nerd_.”

“You don’t have to believe me. You’ll find out for yourself soon enough.”

She hummed placatingly. She had a pretty good idea why he was so attached to the idea of having a girl, and that idea started with E and ended with L-L-A. It occurred to her that in the midst of so much chaos, he hadn’t seemed to have noticed the changes, so she took his hand. He tried to twine their fingers together, but she pulled his hand closer and pressed it flat against the slight extra roundness of her stomach.

His eyes flew wide. “That’s…”

She beamed at him. “Wasn’t sure if you could tell.”

“Karen, there’s really something in there.”

“I mean, I hope so,” she said dryly.

Now he was beaming too, but she only caught a brief glimpse of his excited expression before he ducked his head down to press his ear against her stomach.

“Can’t you hear it from across the room?”

“Yeah,” he said happily. “But this is better.”

That couldn’t possibly be comfortable, the way he was half-crouched and bent over like that. Still, she didn’t move except to card her hand through his hair, wishing they could stay like this forever. Or at least spend the rest of the day tangled up together, ignoring the rest of the world.

But Matt’s phone started ringing out _Mom, Mom, Mom_. Karen’s stomach flipped as Matt got up from the bed, fishing it out of his pocket. “You okay? What? He didn’t—yeah, yeah, okay. I’ll be right there. Hold on.” He hung up and didn’t look like he was panicking, so Karen tried to get her heartrate to calm down again. “Stone never went back for Dex and Mom doesn’t think he should be at the church so long with so many triggers. Can I go get him?”

“And, what, take him back here?”

“I need to talk to Melvin about Betsy’s case, actually, so I figured we could go to the shop until I can get ahold of Stone. Let me just…” He took a half step in one direction, then a half step in another, then seemed to make up his mind and headed for his laptop on the couch.

Karen watched him, chewing on a fingernail. Foggy really had done a great job getting the other cases in order before…before. But some of them were still ongoing. Was Matt really going to keep all of them, on top of taking Betsy’s, on top of prepping for…for _hers?_ “Matt?”

“Yeah?” He didn’t glance up from where he was zipping up his bag on the couch.

“Have you thought about…outsourcing?”

“What, Betsy’s case?”

“Or any of them.”

Straightening up, he gave her his full attention but didn’t say anything.

It would kill him to outsource. She knew that. He hadn’t been exactly _invested_ in his own cases, not since she shot Vanessa, but that didn’t mean he’d want to give them up. And since this whole mess was Karen’s fault, it didn’t feel right to push him to make more room for her in his schedule. So she didn’t say anything either.

Finally, he zipped the bag the rest of the way up and slung it over his shoulder. He rested his hand on her shoulder for less than a second. “I’ll think about it.”

Then he was gone.

Karen let out a slow breath.

 

She spent the next hour reliving Frank Castle’s trial, trying to focus on the facts of the case and not the memory of Foggy’s horror every time he had to look at a picture of Frank’s victims. Or Matt’s why-can’t-you-understand-that-killing-people-is-evil attitude.

It wasn’t gonna be like that this time.

But just because Matt (and Foggy, if he _woke up_ in time) didn’t openly judge her didn’t mean he didn’t…didn’t, what, wish she hadn’t killed Vanessa? Or Wesley?

That wasn’t fair. _She_ wished she hadn’t killed them.

But.

Maybe it was a good thing Matt had taken off. She could feel herself getting more and more worked up and the last thing she needed was to try to figure out how to explain what she was feeling. He’d definitely ask if something was wrong, if she was okay.

“Are you all right?”

She jumped in shock and almost threw her laptop before she recognized Stone in the doorway to the bedroom. “What are you _doing_ here?” she yelped. “How’d you get in here?”

“Can you show me how to do legal research?”

“ _What?_ You’re supposed to be watching Dex!”

“It’s Matty’s turn,” he said easily, strolling into the room to perch on the far corner of the bed. “And I thought it’d be nice to see you for once not because you need me but because I need you. Friendship is supposed to be mutual, isn’t it?”

She forced her heartrate back down to something semi-normal. “We’re friends?”

His smooth expression faltered. “Aren’t we?”

It wasn’t that she never would’ve used the word, just that she was surprised he’d chosen to. “You know, I’m not actually a lawyer.”

Stone’s eyes remained unmoving. “Can you help?”

She sighed. “What are you looking for?”

“How to defend someone against a murder charge,” he said, stealing the breath from her lungs before he went on: “For Dex.”

Voice steady. “Why aren’t you asking Matt?”

“I’m not sure he’s interested in Dex’s defense,” Stone muttered.

Karen hadn’t realized that was an option. “You think I am?”

He met her gaze. “Aren’t you? After all, you understand what it’s like. So do I. Matty doesn’t. Not really.”

“He doesn’t have to understand to be good at his job,” she snapped.

“Will you help me?”

It wasn’t like the research wouldn’t also help her. She glared up at the ceiling. “Yes, all right. Fine.” She tried to think of the best place to start. She could show him the notes from Frank Castle’s case (which were probably more relevant to Dex than to her anyway), but maybe it would be better to introduce him to the general rules first. She could log him in to one of the databases Matt and Foggy used and let him hunt through different cases and statutes. Except he wasn’t even from the United States. Maybe she should introduce him to the basic principles of the American legal system first?

She was still deciding as she turned on her laptop and pulled up a search engine, which she’d set up to automatically open to a webpage of local news headlines.

_SOURCES PLACE KAREN MURDOCK AT THE SCENE OF VANESSA FISK'S MURDER._

Beside her, Stone inhaled quietly.

She stared at the screen. That—that wasn’t right. That couldn’t be right. She clicked on the link and quickly scanned the article to see interviews from guests of the gallery claiming to have seen Karen enter, then leave in a rush.

No mention of Matt. The interviews were faked? But that didn’t seem to matter with the headlines screaming in her face.

Not just Vanessa, either.

_EX-JOURNALIST CONNECTED TO MURDER OF HELL’S KITCHEN’S JAMES WESLEY._

 What the hell? The link took her to an article with a video embedded. Karen’s heart dropped into her stomach as she stared into her own blue eyes set against the wintery white of Fisk’s penthouse.

No.

No, no, no.

“ _I killed Wesley._ ”

Her voice in the recording was an amplified whisper almost overwhelmed by the background noises. But it was there.

“ _I shot him seven times. Because the clip ran out._ _He deserved—_ ”

She slammed her laptop shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This stupid chapter was so STUBBORN. But I'm really excited about the next one, so I'm gonna throw it up anyway.
> 
> Oh, hey, 100k words! <3


	23. Threaten with Murder and Bribe Us with Peace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter tile from "Remember the Empire" by House of Heroes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIJjVqGhjsA).

Peter

“So they’ve just put the deposit down, and _then_ they find out that all those RV units are getting, like, recalled due to a faulty breaking system or something, which isn’t really the kind of thing you can work around, you know?”

Peter made a general noise of agreement and kept pretending to do homework at the table while Aunt May wandered around the kitchen, chattering about a friend of a friend or something. Since Peter was so often with the Valliers now, she’d instituted this new rule that they spend as much time as possible together whenever Peter was actually home. Annoying, since if Peter were in his room he could just lie on his bed reliving the shooting instead of sitting here trying to care about…what subject was he even working on?

Oh. Chemistry. He was supposed to be good at chemistry.

“So I keep saying, they should’ve just gotten a boat, right?”

Matt was right to tell him not to rely on his spidey sense. His spidey sense did squat when someone else was in danger. Someone else without a healing factor.

“I mean, we used to go out on the lake with Ben. Remember that? And you’d get seasick over the tiniest waves and I was a terrible aunt who thought it was hilarious?”

He blinked. “You thought it was funny?”

May gaped at him. “I didn’t think you were listening.” She punched a button on the microwave. “Let’s just pretend I didn’t say that. Besides, you thought it was hilarious when I got lost in Ikea.”

Getting seasick while stuck on a lake wasn’t even close to the same thing as getting lost in Ikea, but Peter felt too drained to make the point.

Pausing, May glanced over her shoulder while the microwave whirred behind her. Her lips pursed.

Oh, no.

Suddenly, her face was inches away from his as she leaned her elbows on the table to stare at him. “Peter, honey, c’mon. It wasn’t your fault.”

Just because he didn’t pull the trigger. But the whole point of being Spiderman was stopping stuff like this, even if he wasn’t the one who’d done it in the first place.

May’s eyes narrowed. “Does Matt think it’s your fault?”

Peter opened his mouth to deny it. But, like, maybe Matt _did_ think that? It wasn’t like they’d talked. Which didn’t necessarily mean Matt was avoiding him or anything. Matt’s best friend was shot. He definitely didn’t need to be worrying about how Peter felt right now.

But maybe Matt _was_ avoiding him.

Peter bit down hard on his lip.

“Oh, Peter,” May breathed, running a hand through his hair.

“I should’ve heard it,” he blurted out.

“It happened really fast. And it sounds like the only reason you and Matt were there was because _you_ wanted to talk to both of them. Which is how come Foggy was able to get help, right?”

Right, because otherwise Foggy would’ve been alone and then he _definitely_ would be—Peter’s stomach churned.

The microwave dinged loudly.

May ignored it. “What can I do, honey? What sounds good right now?”

Hearing Foggy laugh and making fun of Matt with him.

“I can ask Ned to come over. Or Michelle.”

“Ned doesn’t know about—wait, what?” Peter blinked. “Michelle?”

May’s eyes started sparkling mischievously. Weird how they could do that when she was still obviously sad and worried. “Aw, c’mon. It’s pretty obvious.”

“We’re not—we’re not like that.”

“But you wanna be,” she said, sing-song.

Peter shoved back away from the table. “And this is _exactly_ why we _can’t_.”

May drew herself up to her full height, eyebrows raised. “Excuse me?”

 _Exhibit Number One why people like us shouldn’t have friends,_ Matt had said, back when Peter found him on his roof, drunk and alone. Which, to be fair, was probably not a moment Matt was particularly proud of.

“You think you shouldn’t have your friends around you because Foggy got hurt?” May asked slowly.

Peter did _not_ want to have this conversation right now, but telling May to forget it would be rude. He just shrugged.

“That doesn’t sound like you. Who told you that?” Before Peter could find a way to worm away from the question without outright lying, she was pushing. “Was it Tony Stark? No, you haven’t been as involved in the internship lately. Was it Matt?”

Feeling weirdly guilty, Peter slumped back into the chair. “Don’t yell at him.”

“Maybe I should,” she said curtly. “Someone needs to knock that thinking out of him. You don’t really believe that, do you?”

“No,” Peter said weakly. Logically, it was obvious that Foggy wouldn’t have been shot if he weren’t friends with Matt. So logically, Matt’s thinking that having no friends meant no friends in danger was solid. But that was leaving out a whole lot of important factors.

Like the fact that friendship was kinda a crucial human function.

Which meant that maybe the best approach was to stop doing things that endangered all the friends, which in Matt and Peter’s case meant stop superheroing. But _that_ wasn’t happening any time soon.

And that left Peter out of ideas.

And feeling like a time bomb.

Which he should probably not tell May.

“Peter,” she said softly, dragging a chair closer so she could sit right in front of him, her brown eyes searching his face. “What’s going on in that genius head of yours?”

The microwave beeped again.

“I'm a time bomb,” he burst out.

Whoops.

“You’re _not_ a time bomb. What would Foggy say?”

“That I’m not a time bomb,” he mumbled.

“Exactly. So here are your choices: you can convince me that you’ve convinced yourself that you’re _not_ a time bomb, or I can go yell at Matt. What d’you think?”

“You can’t yell at Matt, not right now.”

“Try me,” she said dangerously.

He gave in. “Okay, okay. I’ll ask Ned to hang out.” When May arched an eyebrow, he added hesitantly, “And maybe Michelle.”

She gave a satisfied nod. “Good.” Then her eyes, her voice, everything softened. “I’m so proud of you. You know that, right?”

He couldn’t hear heartbeats, but he still believed her.

 

Matt

Honestly, Matt had expected more of a fight in the negotiation for Betsy’s release. If the police believed he was Daredevil, it made sense to assume that the other prosecuting lawyers did, too. Even though prosecutors and defense attorneys weren’t _actually_ enemies by nature (some of them were even friends from Colombia or various internships), Matt assumed the adversarial process would just worsen with the suspicion that he was also a masked vigilante.

But the prosecutor seemed to think Betsy was a waste of time. Once Matt made it clear that Betsy wouldn’t be sharing any information to lead to the arrest of either Melvin or Dex, she backed off.

“I just don’t get why _you’re_ defending her,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“You know. With…” She made a vague gesture around her head that _might_ have been horns.

Matt played dumb and blind. _Not playing,_ Foggy would’ve said. “What?”

“It’s gonna be a disaster, isn’t it? Prosecuting you.”

“For what, my library fines?” He flashed an obviously-fake smile. “Get my client released. Have a nice day.” Then he tapped his way out of her office, making a point of swinging his cane a bit wider than he needed to.

Her suspicions didn’t matter. What mattered was that Betsy was safe, which by extension meant Melvin was safe (ish). Now all Matt had to do was secure Dex somewhere without any projectiles and he could focus on prepping Karen’s defense. They had time. They were fine.

At least, that’s what he thought until Stone called to say he needed to check the news and get back to his apartment as soon as possible.

 

He found Karen on the couch, turning her wedding ring around and around her finger while Stone played with knives in the kitchen. Matt ignored him, going straight to Karen and crouching in front of her.

“Sweetheart.” He tipped her chin up between his fingers. “This is my fault.”

Her laugh was bitter. “Not even you can twist this around so it’s your fault.”

Watch him. “It’s my fault that Lopez didn’t just go directly to Tower.” It should’ve been taken care of in the legal system, not splashed across the _media_.

“You said it yourself. After I blackmailed Tower, Fisk was always gonna have to try harder to get Tower to charge me. But if he gets the people of Hell’s Kitchen calling for my blood—”

“I broke his jaw,” Matt burst out.

She froze in his hands. “…What?”

“And his fingers,” Stone added helpfully. “Still, Matty, accessibility has come a long way. Lopez could’ve found another way to—”

“Why?” Karen interrupted, voice uncharacteristically small.

Matt wet his lips. “To get him to talk. At first. And then…and then because Foggy was hurt, and he was talking about you, and I…”

She didn’t say anything. Didn’t pull away, either, but her posture was still stiff. Tense.

After all, she knew he was Daredevil, but she wasn’t Claire. She’d never seen him torture someone. (Tossing Jasper Evans around for three seconds didn’t count.) And the papers, they didn’t know the difference between injuries inflicted to stop an immediate crime and injuries inflicted in pursuit of information.

Or injuries inflicted just because Matt was pissed off.

Slowly, slowly, he pulled back.

Her words came out in a rush. “It’s fine, it’s fine, I get it.”

Lie, lie, lie.

He felt sick. “I…”

But there was really nothing more to say.

She cleared her throat. “It’s not your fault. It’s _not_. The only reason any of this is happening is because I shot Vanessa. You can’t take the blame for that.”

He couldn’t think of anything to say to that, either.

“I just…” She trailed off.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“This isn’t a great time for us to stop being honest with each other.”

She lowered her voice, which made no difference where either Matt or Stone were concerned. “I just didn’t realize you did stuff like that, that's all. Does…does Foggy know?”

“Does Foggy ask for a record of every hit I land? No.” He was being defensive, he knew it, and that was unspeakably selfish right now. “Sorry, I just…”

Now her laugh was brittle. “No, I’m sorry. I’m being a hypocrite. I mean, killing is obviously worse.”

He opened his mouth to say that it wasn’t, but that would be a lie on his part.

“It’s just…” She threw her head back like she was staring up at the ceiling. “How do you plan on explaining this to our kid?”

What? She was looking way too far ahead. “I didn’t have a problem understanding what my dad did,” Matt pointed out, even though he knew it wasn’t the same: boxing and breaking into people’s homes to break their jaws. And maybe, as a kid, he’d understood his dad a bit too well a bit too soon. Maybe that was why he was like _this_.

“I’m—I’m sorry.” Karen fiddled with her ring again. “This isn’t—that’s not important right now. It’s fine.”

Not a lie, maybe? “I won’t do it again,” he promised gently. Unless he had to.

Stone made a noise of surprise. “Break jaws specifically, or torture people generally?”

Ignoring him, Karen relaxed slightly.

Matt fought to get the conversation back on track. But he needed Foggy. Foggy was the one who knew how to navigate everyone’s needs and emotions at once. “Tell me what Fisk published. Specifically.”

Karen said nothing, but Stone took it upon himself to fill in the gaps. He sounded a bit too calloused, calloused enough to make Matt’s fingers twitch, but at least this way Karen didn’t have to tell him about the articles and video herself. When Stone was finished, Matt nodded as calmly as he could, slipping his hands into his pockets with his shoulders back in a posture that Foggy always described as smolderingly confident.

 _Like you’re reading the minds of the opposing counsel and are totally unimpressed,_ he’d said once.

“We can handle this,” Matt announced.

Karen didn’t express her disconcertment audibly, but her entire body radiated unease.

“He’s trying to discredit you,” Matt insisted. “He’s done this before, remember?”

She shot to her feet. “By framing me for _murder_ , Matt, yes, I remember how we met.”

Stone made a small noise of surprise which Matt and Karen ignored. Matt tried to sound confident. “And you made it through last time. He underestimated you, that’s all he ever does.”

She pressed her hands to her mouth to stifle a choked-off, hysterical laugh.

Matt wasn’t sure if he should reach for her, or if that would only make things worse. “Karen? Trust me, sweetheart.”

“But I didn’t kill Daniel Fisher,” she whispered.

“I know,” he said soothingly.

“You don’t _get_ it. I _didn’t kill_ Daniel Fisher.”

“But—”

“This?” She swallowed. “All of this—all of these stories Fisk is throwing at me? Matt, it’s _true_.”

“That doesn’t mean it’ll stick. There’s no charges, no trial. He’s just trying a different angle to—”

“Stop,” she said shakily.

He froze.

“Stop—stop acting like my lawyer, Matt, I need—” There were tears welling in her eyes. “Could you just—”

Matt extended his arms. “Come here.”

She all but fell against him, burying her face in his shoulder. Trembling. He stroked her hair, hoping Stone couldn’t tell how helpless he felt.

The trembling slowed, but she kept her face hidden in his shirt. “I’m not innocent this time.”

Oh.

But they still hadn’t pressed charges, so why—but, no, she didn’t want him to be her lawyer right now. Matt nuzzled the top of her head. This wasn’t about a legal case. This was…this was about how she _felt_.

A vice clenched around his heart. For the most part, the things he’d done that he felt guilt over felt so heavy because of their number, not their intensity. Broadcasting his many sins would be equivalent to publishing a multi-chapter list of broken bones and concussions inflicted on the criminals of Hell’s Kitchen. He’d quickly become just as numb to it as the citizens trying to keep track of the many injuries.

But Karen? For her, there were only two events. Two deaths. Two people she’d killed. Both of which were about to be separated and analyzed distinctly, drawing everyone’s focus to those two instances of time that she could neither escape nor ignore.

And she couldn’t say, not even to herself, that she didn’t do it.

“Let me take care of something, all right? It'll help.” He murmured the words into her hair and felt her nod, so he excused himself to the hallway just outside the apartment. Didn’t matter that he was still within Stone’s hearing range as long as he got some distance from Karen. Then he pulled out his phone and said three words that he hadn’t had reason to say since that one time in law school when she stole his criminal law textbook: “Call Marci Stahl.”

Or was it Marci Nelson now? Nelson-Stahl? He had no idea, but there’d been a new ring on Foggy’s finger that Foggy hadn’t had time to explain.

She picked up on the third ring. “Are you in jail again?”

“Listen, I know the timing is terrible—”

“When isn’t it, with you?”

He ignored the sting of those words. “Have you seen the news?”

“Nothing about Foggy,” she said bitterly. “Fisk must still have some of his media connections, or else—”

“He definitely does. He just published Karen’s crimes.”

Marci was quiet for less than a second as she absorbed and interpreted this. “So you’re calling for my help.”

“Fogs said you’re not with Hogarth anymore. A high-profile case like this could really help you build your—”

“It’s not about the _profile_ , Murdock.”

She actually sounded offended. No—injured, maybe. Matt hadn’t thought that was even possible with her. “So you’ll help us?”

She rattled off an address. “Half an hour. Don’t be late. And don’t bring Karen.” With that, she hung up.

Well, she was as acerbic as ever, but Matt couldn’t help feeling lighter with the knowledge that she was on their side.

 

He didn’t want to leave Karen alone, but Stone needed to get back to Dex and Matt needed to follow Marci’s every instruction for the foreseeable future, so he told her he was looking into something (vague but true, and he didn’t want to get her hopes up) and she said she needed to talk to Ellison anyway. Besides, she had Frank, who seemed to sense that something was wrong and refused to budge from Karen’s side. So, hoping he wasn’t making a mistake and trying not to think about how those years at Colombia had absolutely failed to prepare him for _this_ , he got a cab to meet Marci.

As soon as he stepped out onto the sidewalk, he was overwhelmed by a blast of delicious scents. Vanilla, sugar, butter, chocolate, something raspberry. Not even a hint of artificial flavoring. His mouth watered.

Marci’s sharp scent cut through the aroma. “You made it.”

“Yeah, the taxi system is wonderful like that.”

“I didn’t think you’d come.”

He frowned, tilting his head. “You said we were here for the case. But where is here? It smells like…cake?”

“ _Here_ is where you pay me for all the legal services I’m about to provide. Foggy always said you were picky, and now I can only assume that it’s an area of expertise for you.” She lowered her voice. “Can you really taste hand soap?”

“Marci. This is not the time.”

“We’ll divide up the workload for Karen’s case as soon as you’ve helped me choose a perfect cake for the wedding,” she informed him in a voice that left no room for argument.

This was definitely not what he’d been expecting, but he found himself smiling tentatively at the thought of spending even five minutes doing something so…normal. Relatively. “I’ll do my best. Did, uh…did Foggy know you were planning this?”

“He thought this might be taking advantage of you when I brought it up, so it’s a surprise.”

“I’m fine with this. I’m—I’m happy to help.”

“Good. Come on.” She took a step towards the shop where the aroma was concentrated. On the one hand, he didn’t enjoy being commanded. On the other, he didn’t really want to argue with getting closer to these scents. Besides, she stopped and extended her hand towards his arm again and said, “How do I do this?” and that…got to him, apparently.

He put his hand on her elbow. “I hold your arm, actually. Now you just walk, and I’ll follow.”

She took him at his word, leading the way into the shop. A bell chimed overhead and he felt a wave of warmth as the smells swirled around him. He could practically taste the sugar particles in the air.

“From your face, I assume I picked a good shop?”

“This place smells amazing.”

“But we won’t be sniffing the cake, now, will we?” she led him to the counter, raising a hand for the attendant. “Hi, we’d like to sample your wedding cakes, thank you.”

The attendant’s brief double take as she noticed his glasses and cane didn’t leak into her voice, and she didn’t say anything about Frank. “Oh, congratulations!” she chirped. “When’s the date?”

“August eighteenth,” Marci said smoothly.

Matt hadn’t heard that and was pretty sure she was making it up, but either he couldn’t read her or she was completely unbothered by lying. He nodded anyway like he was on the same page, wondering if the attendant realized that he was already wearing a ring.

Apparently not, or maybe Marci was giving her a warning look. “What are you looking for?” And…cue the blush as she realized what she’d said. “I mean—”

“Oh, honey, what do you think?” Marci interrupted, tilting her head at Matt. Her hair swished over her shoulders.

He played along, partly as a favor to Marci and Foggy and partly because he really wanted to taste the source of these smells. “Raspberry,” he suggested.

“We have six raspberry cakes. Would you like to try all of them?”

He was already nodding.

He spent the next ten minutes tasting cakes with various raspberry fillings and sauces. Marci grilled him with questions whenever the attendant wasn’t paying enough attention. Eventually, the settled on a chocolate-and-raspberry cake that Matt was reasonably certain would be featured at the various feasts in heaven.

Marci was less effusive but equally satisfied. “He loves raspberry,” she said quietly once they left the shop.

Matt leaned on his cane. “I know.”

She cleared her throat. “So. Karen. First things first. You need to interview her.”

He blinked. “You sure I should do it?”

“She’ll be more honest with you than with me. Assuming you can handle it.”

“I can handle it,” he said immediately.

But now it was Marci’s turn to be doubtful. “Can you, though? I don’t wanna deal with any surprises because you were too lovesick to ask the hard questions.”

He wasn’t _lovesick_. He was angry. And…and just generally emotional, and so was Karen, and this entire case was a giant conflict of interest but he couldn’t just walk away, despite Stick’s sneering voice in his memory. “It’ll be fine,” he said, a bit more loudly than necessary, but it worked to get Stick to shut up. “I’ll interview her and pass the notes on to you. While you…?”

“Hunt down those fake interviews from the article, for starters. And see if I can talk to anyone from the FBI who can authenticate that video.”

Maybe everything Fisk published was actually inadmissible. But that didn’t necessarily mean Karen wouldn’t be dragged into court, not with Tower reacting to both Fisk’s needling and the public outcry Fisk was whipping up against her.

Still. “Thank you, Marci,” Matt said quietly.

“Don’t thank me. It’s nice to have a distraction.”

It was such a rude thing to say that Matt laughed. She had a point, though. Wrapping both hands around his cane, he leaned closer. “You doing okay?”

She adjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder. “You know, it’s…” She shifted from one high-heeled foot to the other. “Actually, it’s not good. I’m not good. I’m not handling this well at all…”

“The doctors think he’ll pull through.”

“You think I don’t know that? But they don’t know what he’ll be like, do they? It’s…they’re talking about brain damage, Matt.”

He nodded.

“You remember in law school, when he led that study group for our constitutional law class? And he was the only one who actually understood how everything fit together?”

Matt smiled. “I remember I used his outline to study and then I got a higher grade on the exam. I felt terrible.”

“But he was happy for you.”

Yeah,” Matt said softly. “He was thrilled.”

Tilting her head back, Marci let out a quiet scoff. “He’s a better person than both of us.”

 

“Marci’s going to help us,” Matt announced as soon as he got back to their apartment. Stone was gone, leaving Karen to stand alone by the window, tapping her foot.

“Me,” she corrected quietly. “You’re not the one in trouble.”

“Just give it time. The point is, Marci’s really pissed off right now, and she’s gonna channel all of that energy into your defense. And she’s already one of the best sharks there is, so—” He broke off.

“What?”

He tilted his head at the sound of the loud heartbeat and even louder footsteps, parting his mouth slightly to breath in her scent. Leather, whiskey, some kind of hamburger that smelled _really_ good, and cigarettes.

“Matt, what is it?”

A heavy _thud_ on the roof made Karen jump. “Jessica,” Matt breathed.

The last time he’d seen her was at that party Karen and Foggy put together to celebrate Matt not being disbarred. She hadn’t stuck around, maybe because Danny Rand had been annoying her or maybe because Matt had a hunch she was only there because Foggy paid her to be there in an effort to make Matt feel like he had more friends. (A plan that worked, by the way, and he was absolutely thanking Foggy for that as soon as…as soon as he could.)

Seconds later, Jessica pushed open the door to the roof, a door Matt never bothered to lock but still, common courtesy would be to knock. “Hey,” she said in a voice that wasn’t quite as flat as she probably intended. “Heard you guys are in some trouble.” She slouched down the stairs to stand in front of Karen, hands stuffed into the pockets of her leather jacket. “I’m Jessica Jones, PI and someone who actually cares about hornhead here enough that it would’ve been nice to know he was alive without having to hear about it on the  _news_.”

From her, that was basically a declaration of undying love. “Sorry,” Matt said weakly.

She turned to him with what was probably a scathing look that he was fervently glad he couldn’t see. “Anyway, apparently I don’t have anything better to do—”

A lie, maybe? It’d been a while since he’d heard her heartbeat, though, and it always sounded a bit different.

“—so I’ll keep her alive while you keep her outta jail. Deal?”

This was surprisingly selfless of her, especially given how brittle her voice was. Even more than usual. “You sure?” he asked carefully.

Karen took a deep breath. “You know what I—what they’re saying I did.”

Jessica didn’t answer immediately and Matt desperately wished he could see her expression. “I know,” she said at last. “Do you want my help or not?”

“I do,” he said immediately. Honestly, he needed it.

Her voice shifted, becoming almost bored although he knew from her heartrate that she was anything but. “So, Fisk’s brilliant plan is that he takes out her vigilante husband and he takes out her lawyer BFF and then he starts telling everyone she’s a murderer. The next step is handcuffs.”

“We know,” Karen said through gritted teeth.

“I haven’t been taken out,” Matt argued hotly. The truth was, he wondered if he hadn’t been functionally incapacitated even without a physical blow. Sending people after Ella and Maggie, not to mention Foggy…well, it was definitely enough to make Matt feel like he was chasing his own tail.

“But Fisk’s locked up,” Jessica went on, ignoring him. “So who’s doing his dirty work?”

“His lawyer for a while, but he’s in the hospital now.”

She snorted. “Your fault? Dangled him off a roof till he talked, did you?”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

She was quiet for a second. “There are worse approaches.”

There were _definitely_ more questions to be asked about that, but now was not the time. There were footsteps coming up the stairs outside at a brisk pace that reminded him of waking up after fighting his way out of the prison, hearing the FBI right outside the door.

Police.

He shoved Jessica without thinking. Big mistake, because the next thing he knew, she shoved him back. Against the bedroom door. Which cracked. Loudly.

“ _Ow_.”

“Murdock, what the hell!”

“You gotta go.” He blinked hard, forcing himself to focus. “Police. Police are coming.”

“Yeah, the last thing you need is me here. Don’t do anything stupid.” She headed for the roof access, then stopped. “That goes for both of you,” she threw over her shoulder.

Karen stared after her as Jessica disappeared onto the roof, slamming the door behind her. “I can’t decide if I love her or hate her. Oh, Matt, you have blood in your hair.”

He felt the stickiness at the back of his head and tried to wipe it on the side of his pants. “I’m fine.” His fault for touching her like that anyway. Moving to stand in front of Karen, he ran his hands over her shoulders. She was trembling, but fighting it. “You’re gonna be okay, all right? I’ll be here the whole time.”

“You’re making it sound like I’m going to the dentist.”

“In my opinion, the dentist is much worse.”

She tucked her head under his chin. “You should probably get a better dentist, then.”

“I’m much too Catholic for that.”

They both jumped at the knock on the door. Reluctantly, Matt pulled back and turned around, but he held on to Karen’s hand as he opened the door.

“NYPD,” Brett said heavily. “Karen Murdock, we have a—is that blood?”

“Tomato soup,” Karen muttered.

Brett exhaled through his nose. “Karen Murdock, we have a warrant for your arrest for the murders of James Wesley and Vanessa Fisk. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you.”

Karen squeezed Matt’s hand. “I think I’m good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to Sandyeffingfrank for suggesting Matt and Marci cake tasting together because it's the Cutest. Idea. Ever.
> 
> Oh, and I'm assuming for now that Matt and Co. do NOT know about the events of Jessica Jones Season 3, what with all the chaos they've been experiencing.
> 
> In other news, I don't think I even know what pacing is anymore.


	24. Not Going Down Without a Fight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Not Without a Fight" by Pillar (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g__0hjyoDcI).
> 
> Mind yourselves; very brief mention of Kyle Conway's history of sexual offenses. Other than that, please take notes on the legal stuff. There may or may not be a quiz at the end.

Karen

Handcuffs sliding over her wrist.

It was different. She wasn’t alone this time.

Officers escorting her downstairs.

It was different. She wasn’t covered in blood.

Being pushed into the back of a squad car.

It was different. It was her fault.

 

Maeva

Going to the hospital was a mistake. Ella started crying as soon as they returned to their car, and they didn’t stop. Micah and Maeva had made the executive decision to skip school for the day, but no sooner had they gotten Ella into the house then she was _wailing_.

It was almost nonsensical, but Maeva caught the word “dead” plenty of times.

“Buttercup.” Micah tried to pick her up, but she wormed out of his grasp. “Foggy’s not dead, he’s just—”

“I want him back!” she yelled. “I want my real dad!”

The life disappeared from Micah’s eyes.

Ella seemed to see it—she hesitated for just a second. Then she whirled around and took off for her room.

Heart sinking, Maeva rubbed Micah’s shoulder. “I’ll talk to her.”

His mouth was a grim line. “You do that.”

Maeva couldn’t think of anything else to say, so she hurried up the stairs to find Ella under the bed, gasping for breath. Slowly, Maeva sat down with her back to the mattress, one hand slipping under the bed like she was trying to tempt a scared cat out into the light.

Ella shrank further away.

“You miss Kyle?” Maeva asked, keeping her voice light and neutral.

She mumbled something indiscernible.

“It’s okay if you do.”

“I just—I just—” There was a sound like she was curling herself into a ball. “I know he did bad things, but maybe he could’ve gotten _help_. Like _I’m_ getting.”

“What help are you talking about?”

“Miss Esther! Miss Esther says she helps other people in different ways, and maybe if my dad talked to Miss Esther, he’d be better!”

Maeva suddenly felt like she was standing in a minefield. “Did he ever see anyone like Miss Esther, that you know of?”

Ella popped her head out from under the bed so Maeva could see her shaking it fiercely. “He didn’t have the _chance_.”

“I’m sorry, baby.” Maeva reached out to stroke her cheek. “Maybe it would’ve helped him, we don’t know. But you still couldn’t have stayed with him. He was too dangerous.”

Ella didn’t know, really, about Kyle’s sex offenses. At least…Maeva hoped she didn’t, although she wasn’t sure. Whenever she and Micah tried to broach the subject (usually secretly hoping their attempt at starting the conversation would fail), Ella switched to talking about something else.

“Matt was angry,” Ella said suddenly.

Maeva narrowed her eyes. “When?”

“When…when…Stone, he was there, he said Matt was angry when he fought my dad.” She curled her small hands into fists at her side. “Matt was angry because _I_ told him how my dad hurt me.”

“Matt wasn’t the only one angry about that,” Maeva muttered.

“But if I hadn’t told Matt, maybe he wouldn’t have been so angry and maybe he wouldn’t have…maybe my dad _would_ have the chance to see someone like Miss Esther, and maybe he _would’ve_ gotten better, and maybe I…” She blinked, hard, against the tears Maeva could see welling in her eyes. “I miss him _so much_.”

 _Why?_ Maeva wanted to scream. “I know you do,” she soothed, reaching out to rub Ella’s back, but Ella flinched away. Maeva had no idea what to do. Maybe she should give Ella space. Maybe she should plant herself next to this bed and not leave until Ella calmed down. She bit her lip. “You want me to stay with you?”

In answer, Ella disappeared under the bed again.

“Okay,” Maeva said gently. “I’ll leave you alone for a bit, but I’m coming back to get you for dinner in half an hour, all right? Or…or if you want to come down before that, that’s good, too.”

No answer.

Hoping she wasn’t making a mistake, Maeva got up. She glanced back at Ella’s doorway, but Ella was still burrowed under the bed. Shutting the door silently, Maeva descended the steps to find Micah sitting on the couch, tapping vacantly at his phone.

Maeva lowered herself beside him, curling against his side. “We knew this might happen at some point.”

He didn’t respond for several minutes. “You were right about the stress.”

“She’ll bounce back,” Maeva assured him, trying to sound more certain than she felt. “She always does.”

Micah just grunted and stared at his phone.

Sighing, Maeva picked up a book. She’d actually managed to get somewhat lost in it when one of the steps on the stairs creaked. She lifted her eyes but not her head to see Ella hiding around the corner, tearstains on the half of her face that was visible. Maeva glanced at Micah to see that he hadn’t moved, hadn’t picked up a book or a phone, and was staring firmly at his shoes. Like Ella was a small animal he didn’t want to startle away.

Leaving to give them privacy seemed too disruptive, so Maeva just dropped her eyes back to her book as Ella crept closer, knowing she wasn’t fooling either of them. But Micah seemed to have all Ella’s attention.

She stopped in front of Micah and sniffled. “Daddy?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Maeva saw Micah look up. It was obvious he wanted to reach for Ella, but he held still. “Yes, buttercup?”

Ella bit her trembling lip at the nickname. “Daddy, I’m sorry.”

“What for?” he asked softly.

“I hurt you.” She took a shaky breath. “Didn’t I?”

He wasn’t going to lie to her. “Yes, Ella. You, uh…hurt me a lot. But I’m not angry.”

Her forehead crinkled. “I _yelled_ at you.”

“I’m not angry,” he repeated. “Will you come closer?”

She hesitated.

“You don’t have to.” Micah’s voice was quieter now. “But I want to hold you.”

That did it. With a stifled sob, Ella darted forward and Maeva couldn’t tell if she jumped up or Micah picked her up, but either way she ended up in his arms, whispering that she was sorry.

“I forgive you,” Micah said, matching each of her apologies with a promise. “I forgive you. I love you.”

He kept saying it until she stopped apologizing and curled up in his embrace.

 

Matt

The only reason that guiding Karen through the booking process was not on his list of top ten worst experiences was because he got to stay by her side. She’d disappeared into herself, but he could pick up on the signs of life that no one else could. She was…not fine, obviously. But she was keeping it together.

He held her hand for the fingerprinting, told her that her mug shot looked beautiful (she was not amused), and shut down basically every question Brett tried to ask her in the interview. Not that Brett was trying very hard, and he left after only about twenty minutes, right around the time that Matt registered the loud heartbeat from across the street.

New officers came, two women Matt didn’t know, to take Karen to her cell.

“I’ll look into bail,” he promised. “I’ll see you soon.”

“I know.” She stepped past him to go with the officers.

He grabbed her wrist, pulled her back, and shut out the world for about two seconds until the officers interrupted the kiss, steering her out of the room. Her footsteps echoed down the hall.

But that was Jessica’s heart beating just outside. There was nothing else he could do here, not yet, so he figured he might as well figure out what she wanted as long as she didn’t ask him to go anywhere. He ducked out of the nearest exit, exhaling sharply to clear his nose of the pungent scents of the precinct, and found her leaning against the brick wall of a shop across the street, poking at an old cigarette butt with the toe of her boot.

“Where’s your partner?” she greeted him. “Cloudy, or whatever?”

She knew his name. She used to work for his old boss and he’d gotten Luke Cage off. She knew his name. Matt hoped she didn’t know what happened because she normally wasn’t that insensitive. Then again, he hoped she did know because if she didn’t, it meant he’d have to explain.

She just stood there, waiting.

The words dragged their way out of him. “He’s in a coma.”

She stiffened. “Shit, I didn’t know.”

He quickly redirected the conversation. “Where were you? There was a fake Daredevil tearing Hell’s Kitchen apart. If you thought it was me—”

“Please, I knew it wasn’t you. His face is pointier. Besides, I was dealing with shit.”

“What could _possibly_ —” He stopped himself. There was something in her voice. “What happened?”

“Nothing. It’s been handled.”

“You know that’s a contradiction.”

“Sue me.” She hesitated. “Congratulations.”

He frowned. “For?”

“Taking down Fisk, I guess, but mostly for, you know, patching things up with Foggy. You guys are actually working together again, and I’m not gonna lie, I thought that was impossible.”

Geeze, he’d missed her.

“Anyway.”  Jessica’s quickening heartrate belied her casual posture. Not like she was nervous. He thought. He wasn’t as familiar with her heartbeat, but he thought he recognized her current signals from all the times she’d been faced with doing something she deeply did not want to do. Which made for a pretty large sample size, actually. “What happened to the zombie girl?”

He felt like he’d been hit in the gut. “What?”

“I just need to know. Is she still alive?”

“I made it out of Midland Circle,” Matt said stiffly. “As far as I know, she didn’t.”

“So she _could_ be alive.”

“She’s not relevant right now.”

“But she could be, if she showed up with her swords.”

“Sais.”

“Whatever.” Pause. “How many female friends do you have? Who know about, you know.” She waved her hand. “The zombie.”

“What?” he spluttered. “Stop calling her that.”

“Because believe me, this is _not_ on the list of things I ever wanna have to say to you, but someone’s gotta do it and Foggy could try, but this is gonna take a certain level of finesse.”

“Do you even know the definition?”

She folded her arms across her chest. “Was Elektra really your girlfriend?”

Matt clenched his jaw. “ _Why_ do you _care?_ ”

“Because I wanna know if Karen’s a rebound,” she said bluntly.

Matt barked out a harsh laugh. “Yeah, okay, I don’t have to answer that.”

“I’m not _judging_ ,” she insisted, somehow managing to inject venom into a drawl. “Just looking out for Karen.”

“Why?” Matt asked more quietly. “You barely know her.”

Jessica made a sound like he’d insulted her down to the very core of her being. “You were ready to die with Elektra a year ago, and now you’re married to someone else. That raises some red flags.”

“I love Karen, and that’s all you need to—”

“I was with you in that hole, Murdock. I saw how you were with her. You died just to stay with her. If no one else has called you on it, I feel like I have to.”

She gave him the perfect out, of course. All he had to do was say someone else called him on it. He ran a hand through his hair. “All right. Fine. Elektra and I were together when I was in law school, but that ended when she tried to get me to kill someone. We never got back together. Technically.”

“Technically?”

He spent about a second trying to think about how to explain the let’s-run-away-together conversation and gave up. “The point is, she wasn’t my girlfriend like you all kept saying.”

“But you were willing to die for her.”

True. He'd also just been...willing to die. “It’s complicated.”

“I’ve got time.”

A brief, humorless smile. “She knew me better than anyone. She knew what I could do.”

“See, and if you weren’t so shy about _what you can do_ , she wouldn’t be so special.”

He’d rather not mention that by that point, Foggy also knew. And hated it. And Karen knew, but hadn't forgiven him for it. “You wouldn’t understand. Throwing people across a room and lifting cars is impressive, Jessica. It’s not…violating.”

She tensed.

“People aren’t usually thrilled to find out I can hear their heartbeat and smell their sweat, even assuming they can get past the vigilante thing. Elektra accepted all of it. So it wasn’t just about…romance.”

“And when she was gone, you just took the next best thing?”

“ _Don’t_ ,” he growled. “I never stopped loving Karen. I made a lot of mistakes—”

Jessica snorted.

“But it was always her. It’s still always her.”

“Fine. Second question. Have you told Karen about the z—sorry, Elektra?”

Matt tipped his head back in exasperation, hoping desperately that she couldn’t see his blush. “ _Yes_.”

“You sure? Because you’re pretty good at conveniently forgetting things.”

Matt glared up at the sky. Not that he was mad at Jessica. No, it was his own fault that they were having this conversation at all. “I wouldn’t have asked her to marry me if I didn’t think she had enough facts to make an informed decision.”

“Informed decision,” Jessica parroted scathingly.

“Look, I’m sorry that when we were working together, I was so—closed off. I wasn’t exactly at my best. But since then, things have…” He searched for the words. “It’s gotten better. _I’ve_ gotten better.”

She was quiet for a moment, probably staring at him. Reading him in her own way. Then she shrugged. "I put my number in your burner phone back at your place. Call if you need help.” With that, she…whoa, she just _jumped._ Straight up onto the roof. Matt felt a pang of jealousy.

Across the street, people pointed, which was Matt’s cue to leave. He tapped his way to a coffee shop next to the precinct, close enough that if he focused, he could hear what was happening in Karen’s cell. Ordering a coffee, he perched at a table close to the door and waited.

Thinking. He couldn’t ignore the relief that came from knowing Jessica was around, and that relief was heightened by the knowledge that even though Jessica barely knew Karen, she cared about her. That…that meant something.

Honestly, Jessica, with her skills and tenacity, was incredible. If he was feeling brave, Matt would count her as a friend, and it was possible she’d even reciprocate the feeling. But Karen didn’t really know Jessica or have much reason to trust her.

This was a bad idea. This could go extremely, extremely wrong. Matt wasn’t even sure it was needed, since it was possible that Fisk no longer posed a physical threat. But just in case he did…well, Matt wouldn’t mind having extra backup and, more importantly, it would—inconceivably—make Karen feel safer.

 

Karen

They took her clothes and personal belongings. They gave her a medical examination, and Karen felt nausea rise in her throat when they found out she was pregnant not from any physical cause but from the guilt. By the time they let her meet with Matt again, she was sitting in a stiff metal chair when what she _wanted_ was to punch something and then sleep for a week.

Matt took his glasses off as soon as he set foot in the small room. “You okay?”

“You don’t get to ask me that for a month.”

“A week,” he countered.

“Two,” she said.

“Done.” One of his hands drummed lightly on the surface of the table between them. “You up for strategizing? We can wait.”

“No, I wanna…do something. Like, I can testify, right? Explain what happened?”

“You can’t testify,” he said immediately.

If this was more of his protectiveness bullshit… “Matt. I can handle myself under pressure. I can—”

His sightless eyes flashed at her and his voice became harsh, cold, distant. “Mrs. Murdock, on March fourteenth, you went to Vanessa Fisk’s art gallery, didn’t you? Answer the question.”

“…Yes?”

“And you confronted Mrs. Fisk, didn’t you?”

Oh, no. She knew what he was doing. “Yes,” she admitted.

“And as a result of that confrontation, you shot Mrs. Fisk, correct?”

“She was attacking me!”

“But you shot her, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Karen mumbled.

“Just to clarify, Mrs. Murdock, you shot her with a gun that you intentionally brought to her gallery, correct?”

No, no. “Yes.”

Matt’s shoulders slumped and his voice quieted. “You just lost.”

She told herself that punching the table would only hurt her, but she needed to do _something_ with whatever was clawing at her chest. “What am I supposed to do, then?”

He blinked earnestly at her. “You tell me your story, and I’ll figure out the best way to share it with a jury.”

“You already know. I told you.”

He wet his lips. “I want you to walk me through it anyway. In case you missed something. Start with Wesley.”

“What about Vanessa?”

“Let's take it one at a time, all right?”

His voice was soft, but his posture was unbearably _legal_. When she’d told him—and Foggy—before, it was a confession and she’d approached it as such. This was different. She didn’t know what he thought he would find, but she understood that he was going to try to find something. This wasn’t her husband right now, or even her friend. This was her lawyer.

“I might…” He pressed his lips together for a moment. “I might have to ask some questions that you don’t want to answer, and go over the same thing from different angles. If you want a break at any point—”

Her stomach clenched with guilt. Of course her lawyer was still her husband. So she started talking about the assault outside her apartment and waking up in a dimly-lit warehouse, across a table from Wesley.

“Wait,” Matt interrupted. “Back up a little. You said you were drugged?”

“I guess so. I was—”

“But you didn’t go to the hospital?”

Was he of all people really going to lecture her on not going to a hospital? “No,” she said coldly. “I was terrified they’d find me, and what would I say? That I got drugged but shot my way out?”

He started pacing. “Is there any evidence at all that you were drugged?”

She tried to think. But the whole memory was fuzzy. At least, it was fuzzy until she had the gun trained on Wesley’s chest. Then everything became crystal clear. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” She pushed her hair out of her face. “Would that…would that have made a difference?”

He paused, hands on his hips. “Involuntary intoxication is a defense.”

“I wasn’t drunk, I was—”

“Any substance that would’ve effected your intent to commit the crime punches a hole in the prosecution’s case. They have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you intended to kill James Wesley, and they can’t do that if we can convince a jury that you weren’t thinking clearly, especially if the reason you weren’t thinking clearly was because of something Wesley did to you.”

Her heart sank. Was there anything she could’ve done to preserve the evidence? Stolen the cloth, gone to the hospital? “I’m sorry.”

“Hey, no.” He knelt beside her, eyes staring up and darting around her face like he could meet her gaze. “It’s okay. we don’t need that.”

But it would’ve helped.

“And what did Wesley say to you? As best as you can remember.”

She tried to explain, but the best she could manage was to communicate her general impression.

It seemed good enough for Matt. “He was trying to force you into…what, doing criminal things for him?” At her nod, his eyebrows drew closer together in thought. “We can’t use a duress defense because you didn’t actually _do_ the crimes he wanted you to do. But we can play it up to gain sympathy from the jury. Basically, we show that Wesley was threatening you or a third party—”

“You and Foggy,” she said.

He nodded. “Right. We show that no reasonable person would’ve been able to resist the coercion. The severity and imminence of the threat matters here, which would also turn in your favor. And then we show that you didn’t put yourself in the situation, and that’s easy.”

“But we can’t actually use that legal defense?”

He hesitated, then shook his head. He stood up. “Your best defense is self-defense. We just have to prove imminence, necessity, and proportionality: that you were threatened with imminent danger, that the actions you took were necessary to repel the threat, and that the force you used was proportional to the threatened force.”

Her stomach twisted. “The, uh…the proportionality part might be a problem.”

“They’re not absolute requirements. You didn’t have to actually _take_ proportional action as long as you reasonably _believed_ it was—”

“I shot him seven times.”

“Right,” he agreed, unfazed. “And courts recognize that you can use deadly physical force where you reasonably believe the other person is about to use deadly force against you—” Her breathing changed, because she wanted to argue about whether she’d thought Wesley intended to kill her then and there, which of course he heard, because he swept on, “ _or_ where the other person is attempting to commit certain crimes. Kidnapping falls into that list.”

“Seven times, Matt.” There was no getting around that.

“I know,” he said, still calm. “I’ll ask the judge to instruct the jury on how to determine whether your fear was reasonable. He’ll tell them to think about all the facts of the situation. You were drugged and scared and he represented a powerful, dangerous man who already tried to have you killed at least twice. All of that matters.”

“To you?” she asked suddenly.

His eyes narrowed; his mouth opened, then closed. “Come again?”

She shifted closer. “Does all of that matter to you?” Because she’d always gotten the sense that he was more black-and-white. Ironic, for a defense attorney.

“Karen, it’s…it’s not that simple.”

“It’s a yes or no question.”

He shifted his weight, seeming to debate something in his head. Then, sighing, he dragged a chair around the table so he could sit in front of her his knees brushing hers, blind eyes fixed with startling accuracy on her face. “Karen. If we take away the law, the only reason I have for not killing is the belief that no one’s sins, no matter how horrible, are too big for God. Anyone can be redeemed.” His mouth twisted wryly. “I have to believe that.”

“You think Wesley could’ve become a good person?”

“I don’t think of it in terms of good people and bad people. Just…people.”

Whatever was in her chest clawed harder to get out. “So it’s never okay.”

“I…” He found her hand again and held it, running his thumb over her knuckles. “I don’t know. There are some people who are religious and can still justify killing, in certain situations.”

“I thought murder is a mortal sin.”

“Murder, yes. Murder is unjust killing. But God also commands the protection of the oppressed. Sometimes that means stopping the oppressor, whatever it takes.” He tilted his head slightly to the side. “That’s what some people think.”

She sighed. “But not you.”

“I don’t know. For them, it’s…it’s theoretical. For me, it’s real. Every night.” He briefly clenched his jaw. “And I know myself enough to not to trust myself to make that call. Maybe other people who aren’t…who aren’t so angry, maybe they could kill while only thinking about justice. For me, on the streets…I can’t.”

“I wasn’t thinking about justice,” Karen whispered.

His eyes softened. “I don’t want to tell you what you were or weren’t thinking. But I’m sitting here listening to you describe what happened, and knowing that Wesley did so many evil things to so many people and he was threatening to hurt Foggy and me, and you were drugged, and you were scared…and I’m having a hard time figuring out how you could possibly separate all those emotions and decide that you couldn’t possibly have wanted him dead for good reasons.”

“I was angry. I wanted him dead and it wasn’t to help people. It was because I was angry.”

His expression didn’t waver. “Foggy told me, once, that none of us can do anything good without some evil. Well…he wouldn’t have put it that way. But that’s the idea. Call it original sin, call it human complexity, but I really don’t think we can ever do anything without…well, without also finding something to feel guilty about, if we look hard enough.”

She shot to her feet. “Could you stop…stop philosophizing and just tell me whether—” Not whether he thought she was as good person, although that was what she wanted to hear; he’d just insist that he didn’t think in those terms. (She didn’t believe him.) “Tell me whether you think I’m a murderer.”

Swallowing, eyes flicking around her face, he stood up more carefully. “All right. All right. I’m not saying I agree, but…for the sake of discussion, if…if you’re right, and you did what you did knowingly, then…” His voice died for a second. “If it really was murder, then that just means you’ve, um, fallen short. Like I have. Like everyone has.”

That wasn’t okay. You couldn’t just…tell people that.

He hesitated again. “Could you tell me honestly what you think? About what you did?”

He hadn’t actually asked that before. Nor had Foggy. But she knew her answer. “If I’d shot him once, twice, maybe three times, I’d think I’m a good person. But I kept going for no reason except that I wanted him dead. And I…I don’t want to be a person who wants other people dead, but I guess I am.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I wanted you to kill Fisk.” When his head snapped up in shock, she rushed on: “Okay, no, I didn’t want _you_ to kill him, but I wanted Fisk dead. And I wanted Vanessa dead. So…I’m _trying_ to be a good person, I _want_ to be a good person, but…I guess I just know myself too well to believe that.”

He kept his eyes lowered, and didn’t respond.

When it was just her and Matt, it hadn’t felt that bad. Matt could be self-righteous, but they weren’t fooling anyone. They both knew that if getting to heaven was a race, people like Foggy would beat them every time. And she’d been okay with that. Really.

But now? Her hand drifted to her stomach. They were responsible not just for taking care of a baby but raising a _person_. Maybe a little boy who’d need to learn not to use violence to solve his problems. Maybe a little girl who’d want to be just like her mommy.

Karen’s throat tightened. “Can we just—can we get back to…?”

“Yeah,” he said quickly. “’Course.” He sat back down and waited for her to sit, too. “We need to focus on the video.” His voice turned brisk, professional. “You told him you shot Wesley seven times, and that you would’ve shot him more if the clip hadn’t run out.”

She breathed out shakily. Matt’s face was calm, confident. It was his lawyer face, one that gave absolutely no indication about what he was actually thinking or feeling. It was a face he used to soothe anxious clients and convince them that they could trust him. It did nothing to help her trust him.

“But that’s hearsay, isn’t it?” she asked. “If I don’t testify—”

“But it would fall under the exception for statements made against interest. You’re unavailable as a declarant if you assert your fifth amendment privilege, but if Fisk can show that at the time you made those statements, those statements expose you to criminal liability, courts assume that the statements are reliable.” He offered a thin smile. “Now, statements against interest do require corroboration for criminal trials. Ultimately, it’s up to the judge, and judges tend to be reluctant to let these statements in. But…you did corroborate your own statement, which is…not great.”

She felt weirdly calm, like her brain was trying to imitate the emotion he was clearly intentionally exuding. “How did I corroborate it?”

“Seven times,” he said softly. “If that matches the police and autopsy reports…that information isn’t public knowledge. Anyone who looks into his death knows that he was shot, but not that he was shot seven times. I have no reason to know that except that you told me, and you have no reason to know that except that…you were there.”

Now her eyes stung. “I’m sorry, Matt.”

“Hey,” he said firmly. “It’s all right. We’ll figure it out.” His lips quirked. “That’s why you’re paying me, right?”

She blinked hard to clear her eyes of tears. “Right. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“Well, I kinda feel like you’re just paying me with the expectation that I’ll take you on a fancy vacation later, so…”

“But you’re forgetting the most important part of that vacation: I’ll be there with you.”

Leaning forward, he kissed her gently. “Exactly.”

She sighed against his lips, but she felt more relaxed (slightly). He was here, he was helping her, he wasn't blaming her. At least, not out loud, and he was doing such a good job acting like his sole mission in life was to advocate for her that it was hard to tell whether he secretly blamed her.

Eventually, reluctantly, he pulled back. “Karen?”

“Hmm?”

“I was thinking…” He tapped his fingers restlessly against his leg. “With everything that’s going on, maybe we could use some more help.” He paused.

“Um…is that a question?”

“No, just…look, you know I don’t agree with…with how he handles things, but I understand that you trust him, or something, and he’s good at, you know…stopping bad people.” Matt grimaced.

“Who are you talking about?”

He looked like he couldn’t quite believe what he was about to say. “I was just…I was just, uh, wondering if you know how to contact Frank Castle.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise 5,000 word chapters are not the new norm. There was just a lot to cover, what with the angst and the philosophizing and the legal stuff (no actual quiz unless you find yourself arguing self-defense, in which case please get an actual lawyer), and Jessica had to pop back in too, because she does what she wants.
> 
> PS: to my lawyer readers, please call me out if I get anything wrong! (Honestly, that'll be a standing request for pretty much the rest of this fic.)


	25. I'll Wear Your Guilt, Your Cross, Your Hell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Albatross" by Attalus (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCAssBv0Aiw).
> 
> Spoiler alert for Jessica Jones Season 3. I'm so, so sorry if any of you haven't seen it and are planning to, maybe pause on this fic a while if you care about spoilers. Normally I try not to reference other shows too much so people who just watch Daredevil won't miss anything, but the parallels in JJS3 are BEAUTIFUL.

Jessica

She didn’t expect Matt to call. He didn’t need people. Actually, it was pretty obvious that he desperately needed a lot of things, including a place to drink that wasn’t Josie’s (yeah, she knew about that hole in the wall) and also including people.

Not Jessica, necessarily. Just…people.

For one thing, he was too Catholic and world-weary for his own good, the kind of guy who smiled less the more time he spent stuck in his own head. He needed people to make fun of him, get him to stop being so dramatic about everything. Jessica was _very_ good at that. She figured Foggy was too, before the whole…shot-in-the-head thing.

Yeah, she should’ve done more research before showing up because _that_ was five awkward seconds she never wanted to relive.

But Matt, he also needed people to pull him back from the edge. See, she knew about Kyle Conway. Hadn’t known about it until recently, too wrapped up in her own never-ending crises to give Murdock the stalking he deserved. But then Trish killed three people and tried to kill Jessica too, when Jessica said enough was enough. Then they sent Trish to supermax for superpowered people and…and Jessica needed to know if anyone else she knew was in danger of the same thing.

Danny was off the grid. Luke was…Luke. Matt, though? She got the whole hemophilia thing, she really did, but he was so Catholic that accidentally killing someone might push him straight over the edge he liked to backflip so close to anyway.

Really, the news stories about Karen just made her show up sooner rather than later.

So when he called her while she was staring unhappily at the tiny kitchenette in her motel room, half-wishing Erik was there because he might be able to convince her that solid food was worth it, she actually answered.

“Are you free?” he asked. “I need you to meet someone.”

Ew. “Sorry, I don’t do that.”

“You said you wanted to help.”

Well, he got her there. “Who?” she sighed.

She thought she was prepared for whatever he might say, but nope; she was not ready for him to answer: “My mom.”

 

Fun fact: Jessica knew about Maggie from back when she’d first dug up Matt’s tragic backstory. And normally she was all about breaking the hard truth to people, but since Matt had already kind of looked like he was on the edge of shattering back then, she’d kept it to herself. And then he’d died under Midland Circle and she’d felt guilty about that secret for about a day before her own life blew up.

Apparently, he found her on his own. So Jessica firmly shoved that guilt aside and resolved to never, ever tell him how long she’d known about Maggie Murdock—the misguided nun who was trying to make up for years of missed bedtime stories and Thanksgiving dinners by being perfect in every way. At least, that was how Matt seemed to think of her.

Anyway, Wilson Fisk also knew Maggie was Matt’s mother, and he _also_ knew Matt ran around in devil horns, so…yeah, she could see why Matt was worried. Still, Jessica kind of wanted to be bitter that Matt Murdock got to have this kind of mom. Instead, she found herself feeling happy for him, which really went against her whole not-giving-a-damn thing.

“How’s Karen?” Jessica asked, before realizing that the question also went against her not-giving-a-damn thing. He was taking her to his church where the nun lurked, dressed in a fancy suit and swinging his cane in front of him, and Jessica was remembering the last time they’d done this. He’d been happier and more relaxed on that one little excursion with her than the entire time she’d known him. (And it was maybe true that she’d been happier with him than…not.)

He knew better than to comment directly, but the slight raise of his eyebrows made it clear that he’d noticed that she was actually being nice. “We’re working on it. I have an idea.” And with that, he changed the subject. “Thank you, by the way.”

“For?”

“For interrogating me yesterday.” He did that weird, half-shrug thing. “It was rude, and tactless, but…I deserved those questions. And you’re right. No one else would’ve known to ask.”

“Yeah, well, I’m trying out the whole hero thing,” she muttered.

He grinned at that. “Yeah?”

It was too close to a question she didn’t want to answer. “Leave it alone.”

“I didn’t even—”

“Anyway, I got you something.” She pulled the gift out of her pocket. It was from Walmart, but she’d taken the time to wrap it, so that had to count for something. She tossed it at him, and he let it bounce off his chest. Oh, because there was a pedestrian heading towards them, a woman with one of those scrappy little dogs. Both the woman and the dog glared at Jessica, who glared right back as she picked up the present and shoved it at Matt.

“Ow,” he said in an exaggeratedly mild tone as the woman and her dog passed. He ran his fingers over it and she could tell the exact moment that he realized that the thing under the wrapping paper was a little pacifier.

“Yeah, congrats for that too,” she said, with a hint of honesty accidentally leaking into her tone.

His lips parted in surprise. “How—how do you even know about that?”

“Medical records. Sorry if you think that’s an invasion of privacy.”

He put the pacifier in his pocket. “Jessica…”

Now he sounded sincere, way too sincere, like he was about to make this into a Thing. She walked faster. “You’re welcome.”

He kept pace, and she could see that smug little bend to his mouth, like he was congratulating himself on confirming she had a heart. “Can I ask you something?”

“Would it stop you if I say no?”

He grinned. “Not so much.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Why’re you still here?”

“Sorry,” she drawled, upping the sarcasm to an eleven. “Am I cramping your style?”

“I just mean…Karen’s in custody.” That sounded like it was hard to say. “You can’t really protect her. Isn’t that why you came back?”

Clever little lawyer. “Do you not want me watching over your mother figure?”

“I’d just like to understand what’s going on with you.”

Telling him the truth seemed fair, after he’d let her interrogate him about Elektra. Too bad Jessica wasn’t interested in fair. “I’m being a good person. Is that so hard to believe?”

“You forget I can tell when you’re lying.”

“Well, you forget I don’t care.”

“Jessica.” His voice softened, turning into something horribly _gentle_. “Tell me. Maybe I can help.”

“Help with what?” she spat. “You can barely handle your own—” She cut herself off.

But he didn’t flinch. Worse, that concerned look lingered on his face, pinching his eyebrows together above his glasses, reflecting her own pale face back at her. And he waited.

The problem was, it would be easy to tell him. Easy to open her mouth and start talking all about Trish, about Jessica’s _mom_ , about Hogarth and the serial killer and the whole shitty mess. But it wouldn’t do any good. Besides, half the point of coming to find him was to do something good that had nothing to do with any of that.

But he slowed down as they turned down a different street, shifting his direction by one or two degrees so that he almost-accidentally walked closer beside her. “I know about Trish.”

She tripped over the sidewalk. “What?”

Not very elegant. Not very subtle. But that was standard.

“I know about Trish,” he repeated calmly, his expression an indecipherable mask that she wanted to punch off his face.

“What about her?” Jessica snapped.

If Matt registered the danger he was in (he had to, he was blind not stupid), he didn’t show it. “I know what she did. I read up on you, after you showed up at the precinct. I found the story about the murders. I’m sorry I didn’t know.”

Jessica didn’t blame him, even though she wanted to. But he’d been busy. Besides, it wasn’t like she’d been paying much attention to the stupid fake Daredevil. Typical, though. Of course he’d only started asking questions after he already knew the answers. That was what lawyers _did_.

She hated lawyers.

She shoved her hands in her pockets. “So?”

He hesitated. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Why should she? As some kind of sign of trust? Declaration of friendship? “Why didn’t you tell me you were back from the dead?”

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Nodded. “Fair,” he admitted.

And didn’t say anything else.

What, that was it? She squinted at him. He was Catholic and kinda against the whole killing-people-thing, so she would’ve expected a lecture for letting Trish go so far. He was also a defense lawyer and probably against the whole throw-someone-into-the-Raft-for-only-three-murders-thing (what kind of hell was her life that she could think of three murders as _only_ three murders?), so she would’ve expected…another lecture—about the system, maybe, or Jessica’s failure to find Trish a decent lawyer.

Something.

But Matt just kept walking, sightless eyes safely hidden behind his stupid dramatic reflective glasses.

She didn’t have to put up with this. She stopped. “What, you don’t have an opinion?”

He stopped too, head tilted. “Do I have the right to one?”

“You’re just as into the hero vigilantism bullshit as she is. I can count on one hand the number of people who have that perspective.”

His eyebrows raised slightly.

Because she just told him way too much and came off as way too desperate.

Except she kinda was desperate. So. Jessica lifted her chin, wishing he could see her glaring at him. That glare was usually so effective. “Just tell me if you think I ruined her life.”

He blinked and took his time gathering his thoughts before getting around to responding, probably sorting through them in his head and discarding the ones he thought would make her punch him in the face, which meant she’d have to take it all with a grain of salt.

“I think,” he said at last, “you did what she would’ve wanted you to do.”

“Turning her in?”

“Stopping her,” he said simply. “I know I don’t have all the facts, and some of the facts I think I do know are probably wrong. But from what I understand, Trish was on her way to becoming a version of the people she hated.”

“A version,” Jessica repeated skeptically.

He inclined his head. “Better intentions, same outcome. I don’t know how self-aware Trish is or can be, but I _think_ that the more she can see herself clearly, the more she’ll be thankful that you stopped her.”

That sounded convenient. But even though she couldn’t read his heartbeat, she recognized the careful, polite veneer over his words and his face. The one he’d used to try to wriggle out of telling the whole story about his zombie girlfriend.

Maybe he wasn’t lying, but he was a lawyer. Half-truths were his bread and butter.

Since he couldn’t see her glare, Jessica made sure it came through in her voice. “What else?”

He was the picture of innocence. “Not sure what you—”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

He sighed. “Jessica. You helped her. In your position, at that point, I would’ve done exactly what you did.”

 _At that point._ Didn’t take a genius to figure out what he really meant by that. _He_ would’ve gotten involved sooner. He wouldn’t have shut Trish out. He would’ve tried to—to adopt her or something, like he wanted to do with his zombie girlfriend. He would’ve tried to _fix_ her.

“She killed my mom,” Jessica said before she could stop herself.

“I know, and I’m so—”

“She killed my mom and she acted like she was _right_ , like _I_ was the one being—being selfish because I wished—I wanted—” She cut herself off, made herself shut up. It was just hard to come up with the words for the betrayal when everything Trish did had been specifically designed to hurt Jessica as much as possible.

That wasn’t true.

But it sure felt like it.

“Jessica,” he began.

“Do I look like I came here to talk about it?”

He backed off with a casual, “I have no idea whatsoever,” which gave her the perfect opening to insult his so-called powers (did he call them that, though?) and prompted them to settle into familiar banter as they approached the church.

Her footsteps stuttered crossing the gate. Which was dumb. Got worse when he looked over his shoulder at her with the ghost of a smirk on his face. “If I haven’t been smitten, you’ll be fine.”

“Smote,” she muttered, shouldering past him and striding over the path to throw open the door and step inside. The coolness of the air conditioning immediately swept over her.

Matt strolled after her, cane swinging idly. “She’s in the basement, probably.” His head cocked. “Yep.”

“Basement, huh? Sounds like a death trap,” Jessica grumbled. This job kept getting harder and harder.

“Well, it’s also a laundry room.” He led the way down the stairs, skipping the last two steps like an over-excited puppy. “Mom!” he called.

Jessica did not have any feelings about this.

A tiny woman in a stiff black dress stepped fluidly out from around a corner. Her dark eyes actually lit up when they landed on Matt. Then they slid over to her and became unreadable.

Jessica shoved her hands into the pocket of her jacket and slouched.

“Mom, this is Jessica.” Leaning on his cane with one hand, Matt gestured between them. “Jessica, this is Sister Maggie.”

Jessica didn’t want to call her “Sister” anything, and she also didn’t want to just call her “Maggie” after Matt introduced her as a nun, so she laced her voice with extra sarcasm and said, “Hi, Mom.”

The nun’s lips twitched. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

What did _that_ mean?

“Thank you for all you’ve done for your community,” the nun kept going, and Jessica was good at reading people and Maggie didn’t seem to be lying. Jessica glared at Matt like it was his fault his mother was painfully sincere.

“So,” Matt said, infuriatingly oblivious. “We’re not expecting any problems, really. It seems like Fisk knows his target and took his shot with the arrest. We don’t think he has the resources to attack the church. But if he does, a lot of innocent people could get hurt.”

He left off the part about worrying that Fisk knew his mother’s identity. Well, if the nun was anything like Matt, she’d probably bristle at the thought of all this effort being put in just to protect her. Stupid Murdocks.

Matt shoved his hands in his pockets. “I have to get back to the precinct. Thank you again for doing this, Jessica.”

Ugh, social expectations. She mumbled something that sounded kind of like, “You’re welcome.”

“Take care of her,” Maggie murmured, and Matt accepted a hug from her and even bent down so she could kiss his cheek. Jessica had to look away. It only lasted a second before Matt was gone, bounding back up the stairs and off to save the world. Or at least Karen. Maggie watched him go, pride and affection and concern battling it out in her eyes.

“So,” Jessica said loudly. “A nun.”

“They haven’t kicked me out yet,” Maggie remarked dryly.

“Not to be blunt, but Matt wasn’t, y’know, immaculately conceived.”

Maggie didn’t blush. “I was married.”

And here was the part where Jessica had the choice to ask all the open-ended questions and see what info Maggie would give freely…or start poking at Maggie with all the facts she already had just to establish credibility.

She narrowed her eyes. Maggie looked like she shared her son’s cocky snark. Jessica settled on showing off. “Jack Murdock, right?”

Maggie blinked.

“Sorry for your loss.”

“You’ve done your homework,” Maggie said neutrally.

She didn’t know the half of it. Jessica leaned heavily against the wall. “So…how’d you handle figuring out that your kid’s a masked vigilante?”

“Who chose devil horns as his aesthetic,” Maggie added ruefully. “Well, luckily for me, he was unconscious when I first learned who it actually was running around in that suit. Otherwise, I shudder to think what he would’ve read in my…my heartbeat or sweat or whatever else.” She paused. “He wouldn’t have sensed disappointment or horror or anything like that. But surprise? Yes. And…guilt, however that shows up in a persons’ bodily functions.”

No disappointment? At all?

But guilt. Interesting.

Jessica wandered over to one of the weird statues, trying to figure out if it looked like anyone she knew. “So how much danger do you think you’re in?”

Maggie didn’t answer right away. “I’m not sure. Fisk is continually losing resources, but he wasn’t exactly impoverished from the start.”

Jessica made a face.

“You don’t look happy to hear that,” Maggie remarked. “Would you rather I be in imminent peril?”

Jessica turned away from the statue to stare at Maggie, looking to see if she’d crack. “I’m just trying to figure out if this is a trap.”

Maggie simply looked amused. “I don’t think you can get trapped into Catholicism, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“What did he tell you about me?”

“Nothing.”

Well, she _looked_ like she was telling the truth. Maybe that meant it wasn’t a trap. Or maybe Matt figured his mom would be up for the challenge even without a warning.

“Why?” Maggie asked, eyes piercing.

In a split second, Jessica decided to be honest and didn’t bother deciphering her own motivation. “Just trying to figure out if Matt thinks he’s helping you or me.”

Maggie hummed, confirming that, yeah, it was a question worth asking. “Can’t it be both?”

 

Matt

None of the people who’d been interviewed for the article about Vanessa’s death turned up on the witness list. Matt couldn’t help feeling bitter appreciation that at least Tower had a single shred of decency left, enough not to put witnesses on the stand that he knew were lying. Well, Matt assumed that was the reasoning. Tower had probably questioned them, realized their stories didn’t add up, and gone hunting for other evidence. But maybe he didn’t care about ethics at all anymore. Maybe he just didn’t want to be humiliated at trial in case Matt and Marci were able to tear the testimony apart.

Which meant that, as far as Matt could tell, the only evidence Tower had to tie Vanessa’s death to Karen was Vanessa’s phone call made to Karen just before her death, which must’ve shown up in the phone records. That, and obvious motive: Karen’s affiliation with Matt and Foggy would’ve been bad enough even without her repeated articles written against Fisk. But Karen didn’t have an alibi, and there were no other suspects at all, and prosecutions often turned on exactly that kind of circumstantial evidence.

They should be able to get her off from killing Wesley. But the factors that built her self-defense case with Wesley didn’t apply with Vanessa.

It was okay, though. He had a plan. One that Foggy would despise, but one that Marci found both stupid and secretly exciting.

He’d only been waiting for about ten minutes before Karen stepped into the small, echo-y room. Even under her baggy clothes, even with handcuffs clinking, she was still the most beautiful thing he’d sensed all day.

He took her in his arms. “I have good news.”

She leaned against him a bit more heavily than usual. “So do I.”

“You first.”

“I met a woman named Gloria who wants you and Foggy to represent her son.”

Matt blinked. “You’re in here getting us clients?”

“Not intentionally,” she said innocently. “I just start talking about my brilliant husband and his booming law firm—”

“One of those statements is an exaggeration.”

“—and all of a sudden, everyone’s asking for business cards.”

Struck anew by the simple fact that he did not deserve her, he kissed her forehead. “My turn?”

“Sure, but I don’t think you can top my story.”

“Frank’s on his way. He was already on his way, actually.”

Her heartbeat skipped. “And _you_ think that’s good news?”

“No, but you do.” She opened her mouth to ask a question, and he thought he knew what she was about to ask, so he hurried on. “Can we establish some ground rules?”

She hummed in surprise. “Thank you for asking.”

Matt opened his mouth, then closed it. If there was ever a time for him to preach about Frank to Karen, it was definitely not now. But there were legal implications beyond the…moral complications. “Uh, so Frank’s preferred way of dealing with problems is…illegal.” He shifted his weight. “So’s mine, obviously. but his is objectively _more_ illegal.”

Her body turned away from him ever so slightly. “I know.”

“Given the scrutiny we’re both under, I’d like to talk to Castle about using solely nonlethal methods if…if something happens.” She didn’t interrupt to ask what, exactly, he thought might happen—either because she agreed that it was better to be safe and sorry when they had no way to be _certain_ what Fisk was capable of, or because she was pissed at him for being self-righteous. He put his hand on her arm. “I’m not judging.”

“I know.”

“I trust you, okay?” He rose up on his toes to kiss her forehead again.

She leaned into his touch for a second before ducking back, skimming one finger along the stem of his glasses. Probably wondering why he was still wearing them. “How does this apply to me?”

“If you get the chance, I’d like you to encourage him the same way.”

“It’s not like I’ll be able to talk to him,” she pointed out dubiously. “No one’s gonna let Frank Castle anywhere near an incarcerated population.”

“Yeah,” Matt said slowly. “That’s the other thing I wanted to tell you.” He paused. “You might wanna sit down first.”

“That doesn’t fill me with confidence.” But she complied, perching on top of the table with her legs crossed at the ankles.

“Okay. So.” Sticking his hands in his pockets, Matt took a deep breath. “I want you to make a deal.”

“You mean, just admit I’m guilty?”

He made it sound simple and neat. “To a lesser included offense with a reduced sentence. For example, assault. We convince Tower to convince the judge to let you out on probation instead of giving you a prison sentence, and Fisk never gets close to you.”

She was skeptical, it was obvious from the stiff way she held herself on the edge of the table. “How are you gonna get Tower to go from murder to assault?”

He wasn’t sure if she was actually not thinking of the best weapon in their arsenal, or if she was simply too selfless to mention it. “With my excellent people skills,” he said lightly.

“Matt.”

“With Marci’s excellent people skills.”

“ _Matt_ ,” she said, but she let out a tiny laugh that made him feel about a foot taller.

“Okay, okay.” He took another deep breath and moved closer, setting his hand reassuringly over hers. “You have a secret they want, a secret that will buy you almost anything.”

“I do?”

Maybe she really hadn’t thought of it, then. He slid his hand over hers. “Karen, just tell them who I am.”

Her hand jerked out from under his faster than he could blink. “What? No!”

That was fine; he was prepared for that reaction. “Think about it. They’ll take any plea you want if you tell them you’ll testify against Dare—”

“Matt, what the hell!”

“Hey, _hey_. Trust me, it’ll—”

“I’m not selling you out like that,” she hissed. “I’m not— _mmhh_.”

He’d pressed his hand over her mouth. “Sweetheart, you’re not selling me out. Fisk knows who I am. He already tried to use it once, and it just didn’t stick.”

She jerked out from beneath his hand. “Exactly! I can’t sell you out _to the police_ , because then it _will_ stick. I’m not doing that.”

“Brett knows,” Matt interrupted. “We have to get ahead of this before he decides it’s worth it to turn me in.”

“He won’t do that.”

“The cops already think I’m Daredevil, and they’re not _all_ on my side,” he insisted. “Any one of them could stumble onto some…some YouTube video and connect it back to me. It’s just a matter of time.”

She fell into a furious silence.

Carefully, he moved his hand over hers once more. “Karen, please. Trust me.”

“Trust you with what, Matt? With me, or with you? Because I don’t trust you with you.” She gave a short, hysterical laugh. “No one does.”

“It’s not that big of a deal.” At her quick intake of breath, he realized that was the wrong thing to say. “Okay,” he said slowly. “What I meant was, it’s not that big of a deal compared to…compared to the thought of you going through this.” Everything paled in significance in comparison to that.

“Matt.” Her voice shook. “You won’t win.”

“I might,” he argued.

“ _How?_ ”

It was crucial that right now, no matter what, he sounded completely logical and rational. “First of all, we can still invoke marital privilege, since I have to be the one to waive it. And I won’t. So you’ll only be able to testify about what falls under spousal privilege.”

The pitch of her voice rose with anxiety. “What does that mean?”

It was so, so tempting to downplay it (or lie) and let Marci explain it later. That way, Karen was almost certain to agree. But they’d promised to confront things together. Still, he tried to sound extra positive as he said, “Basically, marital privilege shields every conversation we’ve had since we got married.”

She was not impressed. “You told me you were Daredevil over a _year_ ago.”

“Listen, between privilege and the hearsay rules and whatever genius strategy Marci comes up with, it’s not as bad as it sounds, all right? I might be able to win this.”

“Matt—”

He talked over her, but he kept his voice soft. “You don’t have a shot. And, Karen, if one of us has to go to prison, let’s be practical here. Sure, you have a right to the necessary healthcare, but a prison won’t prioritize health.” He paused deliberately. “For _either_ of you. And yes, we could get you into protective custody for a few months, but I can’t guarantee that you’d still be in protective custody after the baby’s born, and then what? Forget Fisk, you’ve made enough enemies as a reporter that you’d be a target no matter what.” He lowered his voice. “I’m blind, so I’ll have protective custody as long as I’m there. If something _does_ go wrong, I can defend myself even without a gun. And of the two of us…” He kissed her forehead as his hand drifted down to her stomach. “I’m not the one doing all the work for our kid.”

Her whole body was trembling. “I don’t want this.”

“I know you don’t. C’mere.” He pulled her in closer, savoring the small, precious bump between them. “No matter how many charges they throw at me, Daredevil’s never killed anyone. And we can fight a lot of the allegations on grounds of self-defense or defense of others. And they won’t even have that many witnesses. Point is, I won’t be in prison for life.” That wasn’t necessarily true. First degree assault had a sentence of anywhere from five to twenty-five years, and how many charges would he be facing? It would easily add up to a life sentence anyway. “It’ll be fine,” he said firmly, and tried very hard not to think about missed birthdays, first words, friends, tears, and laughter.

“I don’t want this.” She muffled the words against his shoulder.

“I know.” He rested his cheek against the top of her head. “But please. Say yes.”

She didn’t. She didn’t say anything.

It felt a bit like cheating, but he reached one hand into his pocket, withdrew the pacifier from Jessica, and pressed it into her palm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> JESSICA MAKES MATT HAPPY NO MATTER WHAT, I DON'T MAKE THE RULES.
> 
> Also, hang tight because things are, obviously, going to get crazy. But the good news is, Matt will have way more fun defending himself than defending Karen (which does not say fantastic things about his mental health, but what else is new) so you can, perhaps paradoxically, expect less angst for a while.


	26. Doesn't Have to be Good Enough

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Never Be Enough" by Sent By Ravens because I love them (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWVLbkdluMI).
> 
> Also, say hi to Frank-the-human! I apologize in advance because I just can't write him with as much swearing as would be realistic; my mom is reading this (because she is Sister Maggie irl). Please feel free to supplement in your heads.

Matt

Matt’s burner buzzed as soon as he stepped out onto the sidewalk. Since it was Stone’s only way of contacting him, Matt now made a point of keeping it on him as much as possible, which was pretty much always since it had a battery life of about a million years. “Hello?”

“I’m at the water tower, Red. See you in five.”

The Punisher’s voice brought back a surge of memories, few of them pleasant. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

_Click._

Frank had hung up. Nice.

Matt considered his options. He couldn’t let Frank see his face, but he couldn’t run around in black in daylight either, but there also wasn’t time to get home for something less conspicuous.

Then again, Frank hadn’t been lying when he’d s said he didn’t care who Matt was. Besides, with whatever was about to happen, Matt was gonna have to rely on Frank. He might as well start trusting him.

Bracing himself, Matt ran a hand down his tie and adjusted his glasses. Then he started walking towards the water tower.

 

The wind whistled in his ears high above the noise of the city beneath. Stopping, Matt took a moment to breathe it in. After all, he wasn’t sure how many nights he had left to walk free on rooftops. So he inhaled the cleaner, clearer air and listened to a handful of teenagers laughing down below.

In spite of everything, it was impossible not to love this city.

“Good view?” Frank asked, wandering up behind him with his heavy stride and a handgun in his belt.

“There’s nothing like it.” Matt turned around to face him, refocusing. “Frank.”

“Red.” Frank shook his head. “Murdock. I knew it. Cute little Halloween costume wasn’t much of a disguise.”

Matt felt irrationally annoyed. Yet another person figured out his secret and never even had the decency to let him know.

“So you’re not actually blind.”

“Nope.” Matt leaned forward on his cane.

“But you really are an attorney, huh? Shit, Red, how could you let this happen?”

He’d been distracted, dealing with too many things at once, unable to prioritize. When Wesley got to her, it was because he’d been cut to shreds outside by Nobu and inside by Foggy. And when Vanessa called her, he’d been…well. He’d been buying her a ring.

He wasn’t going to explain any of that to Frank. “Can you help?” he asked instead.

“Why else would I be here?” Frank cracked his neck. “I’ve gotten out of worse prisons; it won’t be hard to get to her. As long as you—”

“What, _no_ ,” Matt exclaimed, disturbed by the utter lack of hesitation in his voice. “I didn’t call you here to bust her out. She’s taking a plea. She’ll be released on probation in exchange for testifying against me. I hope.”

“You hope,” Frank muttered in disgust. Then the full weight of what Matt just said seemed to sink in. “Against you? Really?”

Matt didn’t say anything.

“Shit. Maybe I should stick around anyway.”

Matt stiffened. “Hell’s Kitchen doesn’t need your methods.”

Frank leaned his face in closer. “And what’re you gonna do about it?”

There was nothing he could do. Not if he wanted Frank’s help protecting Karen. Matt squared his jaw and said nothing, trying to ignore the chorus of _bad idea, bad idea_ in his brain.

“You can’t still be on that.”

Matt dragged the words out: “On what?”

“C’mon, Red. You finally did it.”

Matt froze. “What did you say?”

“Kyle Conway.” Frank’s voice shifted, twisted, like he was speaking through a grimace. “Got everyone convinced it was your civilian persona.” He gestured viciously, probably at Matt’s glasses and cane. “Just another mask for you, right? Doesn’t change the fact it was you who did it.”

Matt's stomach twisted and he heard his own heart pounding in his ears. “That doesn’t matter right now.”

“Doesn’t it,” Frank said under his breath. Then, louder: “I just wanna know one thing. When you killed Conway, did you have any idea the kinda monster he was?”

He felt sick, which was stupid. He should be  _over_ this by now. “That—that’s not why—I wouldn’t have fought him if he hadn’t been threatening someone else.”

“But you knew?” Frank pushed. “And it was bad enough he hit the little girl, he used his fists on Ella—”

Matt was briefly distracted by the fact that Frank knew Ella’s name, knew her _nickname_ , knew not to call her Elizabeth, even though he’d never met her.

“—but you knew what he did to other kids. Didn’t stop with his fists, Red. You knew that.”

“He was a hemophiliac,” Matt insisted, although it sounded pathetic even to him. “He bled out. It’s not like I shot him up.”

“And now he’ll never rape anyone else, isn’t that right?”

Matt gripped his cane tighter. Technically, Kyle Conway was never convicted of rape. There wasn’t enough evidence, so he was only convicted of sexual abuse in the second degree. _Only_. A misdemeanor. He got one year in prison for each count. Which said as much about the judicial system as it did about the prosecutor’s ability to come up with evidence. Matt’s rebuttal died on his tongue.

“Yeah.” Frank’s voice lowered. “Killing him, it worked.”

“Other ways would’ve worked better.”

“But you get that it worked.”

The wave of hot anger that washed over Matt had nowhere to go, no words to form an argument. Because Ella was safe now, safer than she’d ever been while Conway was still alive. And she was happy and unafraid because he could never get to her again.

“And Vanessa,” Frank went on knowingly. “My opinion? Karen did what had to be done.”

“Leave her out of this.”

“Too late for that, Red. Way too late. You lecture her too, or you let her off easy ’cause she loves you?”

Matt blinked. “Excuse me?”

He shook his head. “You know how much of your bullshit she put up with? Not just talkin’ about whatever happened when you were supposed to be my lawyer. I’m talkin’ about all of it.”

“Yeah,” Matt said tersely. “I know.”

“Do ya.”

“Listen, Frank.” Matt stepped closer. “I appreciate you doing this, but you—”

“It’s not for your sake, I’ll tell you that.”

Infuriating. “I appreciate you doing this,” Matt began again, “but you need to understand the stakes. Wilson Fisk wants her in prison where he can get to her. Which means two things: first, if he realizes that’s not happening, he might change his mind and send someone else after her, and you can bet they won’t make be amateurs.”

“I’m shaking in my boots.”

“Second, it means she can’t be caught with you. I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but associating with you violates the conditions of probation.”

Frank shrugged.

“Third, it means you can’t kill anyone.”

“Really? You’re worried about that _now?_ ”

“If she’s affiliated with you,” he said in a growl, “and you take someone’s life, that makes her an accessory if not an accomplice. I’m giving everything I’ve got for this other deal, and if she gets caught again because you screw up, it’s over. Understand?”

“That’s a fancy way to get me to come over to your side. Easier just to—”

Matt grabbed his lapels and privately counted himself lucky that Frank didn’t try to dropkick him. “I’m not playing. And it’s not about what I believe.”

His voice was dismissive as ever. “Yeah, it is.”

“It’s about keeping her out of jail and keeping her alive. You don’t see it that way, and I’ll call the cops in right now, and I’ll hold you down till they get here.”

He half expected Frank to make him prove he could, but the Punisher just stood stiffly in Matt’s grasp. “Okay, all right. I’ll let whatever piece of filth tries to get to her get away breathing. But I’ll break their arm if they give me the chance.”

Matt let him go and stepped back. Part of him whispered that he really shouldn’t be doing this. The other part caught the danger in Frank’s voice, knew that danger was aimed at anyone who threatened Karen, and _purred_. “Break both.”

 

Stone

The next morning, Stone was bored. With Betsy released, he let Melvin go, which was pleasant—one less person to babysit. But it also left Stone and Dex with less stimuli.

They were back in Stone’s apartment, uncomfortably hot due to the groaning AC unit, and Dex was still unconscious. Stone had knocked Dex out and tied him up so he could buy a laptop and a mobile hotspot from a pawn shop, since he couldn’t ask Karen for help anymore and there was no way he could camp out in a public library with Dex. He’d spent the last hour or so started scrolling through report after report of Dex’s previous activities.

And…Dex had definitely caused problems. Stone could see why Matty wanted him in jail.

Still, there had to be something that could be done. After all, Stick did terrible things and got away with it. If only Stone had thought to ask about how he did it, how he kept his name and face out of the system. If Dex just had more support and a few missions to give him purpose, surely he could be…not normal, no, but decent. Perhaps.

Stone simply wasn’t sure if Dex could get either of those things without being in the system, and he was less sure that Dex could be in the system without being in custody.

He rubbed at his temples. American law made no sense. Not that Stone knew much about Italian law, or any kind of law that hadn’t come from Sick and the Chaste.

No need to despair. He could figure this out.

Nevertheless, it was frustrating work, and he was a bit relieved when Matty called to interrupt the tedium.

“You’re still with Dex?”

Stone glanced over at his unconscious form. “He’s fine.”

“Okay, great. Here’s the deal, Stone. Karen’s gonna agree to testify against me in exchange for her release on probation. Which means I won’t—”

Stone stood up in shock. “Testify against you? Are you mad?”

“It’s the only way to—”

“Didn’t I testify _for_ you last time? What was the point of that?”

“It’s for Karen. I just need—”

“Matty, _no_. You won’t last in there.”

“I can take care of myself,” he snapped.

That wasn’t the issue. True, Matty would probably not be beaten to death in prison. But he wouldn’t be able to protect anyone, either in court or in the mask, and he wouldn’t be able to run free on rooftops or spar or pretend to teach his idiot dog parkour. “Matty…”

“Once the deal is made, I won’t be around to help with things. So if you can’t handle Dex, I need to know now.”

“So you can, what, turn him in?”

“Yes,” he said simply.

Stone glowered at the wall. “I’ve got him.”

“Okay. Well. If that changes, if he hurts someone, I’ll flip on him. Just so you know.”

Stone grabbed a knife with his free hand, spinning it agitatedly. “Maybe you should do that anyway. Maybe it would help.”

“Oh, it would definitely help. But I’m not doing that until he gives me a reason to.”

Over the phone, it was impossible to tell for certain if Matty was lying. But Stone didn’t think he was. He also wondered, however, whether Matty hoped Dex would give him a reason.

It was possible that Stone hoped Dex would give him a reason.

“Anyway, I just needed to tell you that, and also to, uh, let you know that I called someone else in. Since I won’t be around to keep Karen safe, and you’ll be with Dex. You, uh…you familiar with the Punisher?”

“I’ve heard the name.”

“She trusts him, and he’s, uh…” Something shifted in Matty’s voice that reminded Stone of the way he always held himself right before a fight. “Effective.”

“And?” Stone prompted.

“Just…look him up, will you? And…and tell me if you think this is a bad idea.”

Stone frowned. That sounded suspiciously like trust.

“And, listen. Don’t let him near Dex.”

 

And so Stone looked up the Punisher and learned everything he could about Frank Castle. Matty was right about one thing: Castle was effective, whether he was using firearms or meat hooks. At that point, Dex was awake and grumbling about his headache, so Stone, naturally, told him that some fresh air would do him good. Putting Dex in the same room with Frank Castle was risky, but Matty had asked for Stone’s opinion. Regardless, Stone needed to do his own assessment before he agreed, even tacitly, to rely on the Punisher for Karen’s safety.

He didn’t know exactly where to find the Punisher, but he’d hunted down far more elusive individuals on missions for the Chaste. Sure enough, it took approximately forty-five minutes to find the Punisher lurking in an abandoned warehouse like the serial killer he was.

Well, that made three of them.

Stone led Dex to the top floor where Castle was perched on a ledge. Now the challenge was to approach Castle without activating his trigger finger. Stone raised his voice. “Frank Castle, you’re here to protect Karen.”

He’d hoped dropping her name would throw Castle off, buy Stone time, but Castle was already on his feet and striding closer, bearing down on Stone like a train.

Dex froze and Stone caught a new scent. Fear. “Is that—”

“Say her name again,” Castle growled, right arm coming up swinging. It wasn’t a pretty strike, but it was fast; Stone barely had time to duck to the side, parrying the incoming punch farther from its target.

But behind him, Stone heard Dex scrambling backwards, and that stole his attention enough that Castle was able to land his next punch, a right uppercut straight into Stone’s ribs.

“Murdock,” Stone coughed, doubling over. “I’m with Murdock.”

“You think I care?” Castle grabbed the front of Stone’s shirt, jerking him upright. Stone politely took advantage of his newfound momentum to flip backwards, snapping Castle’s head back with his foot as he went.

Landing on the balls of his feet, Stone took off after Dex, who’d almost made it to the stairway before he caught up to him. Stone grasped his wrist and brushed his thumb warningly over a pressure point.

“Not the Punisher,” Dex was whispering, sweating and shaking. “Not the Punisher, he’s carrying, gimme something, you gotta give me a knife or something!”

“Calm down,” Stone hissed, keeping his eyes on Castle who was shaking his head, forehead pinched tight in fury. He raised his voice. “We’re on the same team!”

“That what you think?” One of the Punisher’s hands disappeared behind his back. “You think I’m taking any chances with her?”

“You shoot me, and you won’t get anywhere near her,” Stone warned.

Castle drew the gun, though he kept it pointed towards the ground. “Murdock can’t stop me.”

“Maybe not, but Karen wouldn’t forgive you.”

If only Castle could read a heartbeat. As it was, Castle still seemed caught off guard, at least enough that he wasn’t opening fire.

“That’s right.” Stone edged a step closer to Castle, dragging Dex behind him. “I’ve been protecting her.”

“She doesn’t need your—”

“And she’s been helping me.”

Castle was twitchy with adrenaline, head shaking slightly, gun jumping in his hand. “Help you, help you how?”

Stone didn’t owe Castle an explanation of how it was thanks to Karen, in many ways, that he’d stayed in Hell’s Kitchen. Her invasive questions over smoothies was the first experience close to anything normal he’d had in…a decade, more or less. So he just said, “You know how she is.”

To his surprise, Castle let out a grunt of a laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, she is.”

Stone moved a bit closer, keeping the hand not holding Dex low and relaxed. “I’m Stone. A friend of Murdock’s.”

“The hell kinda name is Stone?”

Excellent question. “It’s mine.” He pulled Dex closer. “And this is—”

“ _Shut up_ ,” Dex hissed.

Castle’s eyes narrowed into slits. “Poindexter.”

The scent of fear spiked again and Castle squeezed the gun in his hand and Stone realized belatedly that Matty had probably been right to warn against letting Castle anywhere near Dex, whose body tensed, ready for combat.

“Who let you out?” Castle snarled. “Who let you back on the streets?” Not waiting for an answer, he pointed at Stone. “You know what he’s done?”

“It’s under control,” Stone said tightly, hoping he was right.

Castle’s eyes snapped back to Dex. “You know how many people you’ve killed. Innocents, murdered. You run around this city throwing knives like everyone walkin’ around is just a mannequin, like you—”

“Not anymore,” Stone cut in. He held Castle’s gaze when he again came under the glare. “As I said. It’s under control.”

“It better be.” Castle raised the gun restlessly, eyes flitting back to Dex. “You went after Karen.”

Dex stiffened and for one moment, Stone thought he would argue, rile Castle up until something erupted. But when Dex spoke, his voice was small. “I was following orders.”

“You think that makes it all right?” Castle paced off to the right, shaking his head furiously. “You think you can blame someone else just ’cause the order came from higher up, that’s not how it _works_ , you still gotta make the call even when you’re the one on the ground—”

“I _hoped_ ,” Dex interrupted.

Castle went dangerously still. “What?”

Something hardened in Dex’s eyes. “I hoped it made it okay. I hoped I could just trust F-Fisk, like I trusted the SAC or the CO or my—”

“CO?” Castle interrupted, head cocked. “You served?”

“Yeah.” Dex swallowed. “Sniper.”

Castle remained still, but the gun in his hand seemed more like an afterthought now. “Sniper. Huh. Some of those guys were the only thing that had my back when I was overseas.”

“I’ve always been accurate. Scopes just helped.”

Castle’s eyes narrowed again. “So the military was just target practice for you.”

Dex seemed to realize he’d said the wrong thing. “I was serving my country.”

“Oh yeah? Your country, or yourself?”

“I didn’t—”

“Because let me tell you something, kid.  Everyone’s fighting for something. Everyone gets angry, and it’s always in defense of something. What were you defending out there? Your pride or your fellow soldier?”

“My country,” Dex insisted.

“That so? That’s why you came back and hopped over the line, sold yourself to Fisk?”

Dex’s blood pressure jumped. “I _never_ —”

Castle’s lip curled. “You weren’t fighting for anything but yourself, _Agent_.”

“We’ve all been there,” Stone interjected quietly.

“I haven’t,” Castle spat, still staring at Dex.

Stone sauntered forward. “In that case, why don’t you call up the pope and get yourself canonized as a saint.”

Slowly, Castle turned to face Stone, stepping closer until their chests nearly touched.

“Saint,” Stone repeated softly.

The tension stretched out, thick enough that Stone could’ve sliced it with a knife. Finally, Castle snorted. “I’ve got a job to do, so I’ll let you both walk free tonight.” He jerked his head at Dex. “But once that’s done, you make a mistake and I’ll be there. Know that.”

Stone felt a prickle of unease at the loud, steady heartbeat.

 

Matt

Frank Castle was in town and Matt was pretty sure he’d play by the rules, and Stone had Dex, and Melvin seemed more focused on helping Betsy find a new job than anything else, and Jessica was watching over his mom, the Valliers seemed as steady as ever, and Matt had spent the morning setting up tonight’s meeting with Marci and Tower. Overall, things were coming together about as well as he could hope.

(Except that Foggy was still in the hospital, still in a comma, so Matt didn’t have the chance to bounce any ideas off him and hear how stupid he thought they were, or shoot down any of the even stupider ideas Foggy thought up instead, and—and Matt was _not_ thinking about that.)

Really, there was just one other thing Matt needed to take care of.

He let himself into Fogwell’s with a spare key the owner had given him since he used it so frequently and didn’t cause any damage (that the owner knew of). Dropping his bag on the bench, he grabbed a (disgusting) towel from the bathroom and set it aside, then unzipped his sweatshirt and decided to warm up. His phone chirped Marci’s name a few times, but it was easy to ignore beneath the _thud_ of his fists against the bag.

His sweat was gluing his tank top to his chest when he finally heard Peter’s peculiar heartbeat, even faster than usual as the kid rushed inside in a whirlwind of books, backpack, teenage hormones, synthetic webbing. “Sorry I’m late,” he was babbling. “I had to get more supplies for my webbing and Michelle wanted to come with me but I left my wallet at the Valliers so we had to go there first—”

“We?” Matt echoed.

“Me and Michelle, she and Ella really like each other, by the way, only partly ’cause they share a nickname, but anyway, it took a really long time and then May made us eat with her—”

If memory served, Michelle was the girl who now knew Peter’s identity.

“And it kinda took an unnecessarily long time because May was being _May_ , but…anyway. Yeah. I’m here.”

“What was May doing?” Matt asked innocently.

Peter flushed. “ _Nothing_. Um…” He shifted from foot to foot. “Uh, Matt—Mr. Murdock, I—I just…”

Matt sighed. “You don’t have anything to apologize for.”

“I wasn’t fast enough,” he mumbled.

“I don’t blame you, Peter.”

Peter was quiet for a moment. “So you blame yourself.”

Matt grabbed some wraps out of his bag. “Let’s leave it alone.”

“Sorry.” Peter held still, not saying anything else as Matt took one of his hands and started slowly winding the wrap around his wrist.

Matt kept his eyes aimed downwards. “You, uh…you doing okay? Since.”

Peter hesitated like he wasn’t sure what the right answer was. Matt could only imagine what he was weighing: not wanting to appear indifferent to Foggy’s injuries but not wanting to make it all about himself by admitting how he felt. And not wanting to be a burden. “I don’t know. I mean, yes. I mean, I feel bad for him, and—and for you, but—but you don’t have to worry about me.”

Matt sighed again. “I can’t really help that, you know.”

“But—” Peter broke off. “I mean, if you _want_ to, I guess that’s…cool.”

Because he wouldn’t admit out loud that he wanted Matt to worry about him. Matt was familiar. He switched to the other wrist, but kept his hand on Peter’s arm even after he’d finished. Maybe his dad had never been the most _vocal_ in his affection, but Matt remembered the physical affection with startling clarity. A large hand in his hair, a hard kiss on the top of Matt’s head, an arm slung around his shoulders.

Peter coughed tentatively. “Am I allowed to worry about you?”

Matt gave him a crooked smile. “I mean…if you want to, that’s cool.”

Peter laughed, relaxed slightly, and flexed his wrist. “’Kay, I’m ready. What’re we practicing today?”

Taking his cue, Matt stepped back. Choosing what to train Peter was a challenge, since refined technique didn’t matter so much when the kid had the proportional strength of a spider. And with his spidey sense, reflex and awareness training still felt a little redundant. Still, he liked to think he could still offer Peter practice he wouldn’t get elsewhere.

Swiping up the ratty towel, Matt tossed it on the ground in front of Peter and spread it out with his foot. “I want you to stand there.”

“On the towel?”

“On the towel.”

“Okay…” Peter stepped obediently onto the small space. “And?”

“I want you to stay there.”

Peter groaned as he figured out the catch. “You’re gonna try to knock me off.”

Matt grinned, pleased. “You’re stronger than I am, and you have your spidey sense. But how’s your balance and footwork?”

Peter bounced a little on his toes. “I guess we’ll find out.”

“Regular rules apply,” Matt reminded him. Which pretty much was limited to pulling strikes around particularly sensitive targets, like joints or the face.

“Except the floor is lava.”

Matt was gonna miss kid. “It’s lava for you,” he corrected, sliding back into a fighting stance.

 

Marci

Having a lawyer for a client was the worst, especially when that client also wanted to represent himself. Technically, the client got the final say in any decisions, but it normally wasn’t too difficult to nudge clients in whatever direction Marci wanted. She knew she’d have no such luck with Matthew Murdock.

“What’s your plan?” she asked, striding down the hall towards Tower’s office, watching his cane flick back and forth ahead of them.

“Did you not look at the notes I sent you?”

Since he couldn’t see her rolling her eyes, she scoffed loudly. “For Karen’s case. But what’s your plan for _your_ case?”

“We’ll get to that.”

“We should discuss this.”

“What, now? Five minutes before the meeting?”

“You refused to answer my calls all day!” When he just shrugged, she grabbed his arm, jerking him to a stop. “Matt,” she hissed. “Have you even looked at the Trish Walker case?”

“We’re not the same. I never killed anyone except Kyle Conway.”

“That you know of,” she muttered.

“I’d know,” he shot back.

“Well, the jury might not have your confidence!”

“I think they will.”

She folded her arms across her chest and arched an eyebrow, studying him. So different to hear Foggy talk about Matt’s convictions (sometimes complaining, sometimes admiring, sometimes both) than to see it on his stubborn face. But it was clear as day: he loved his city and would only ever believe the best of it. No matter what it believed of him.

“Come on.” He started walking again. “We can’t be late.”

Tower opened his door to them and ushered them into his office, lined with the requisite bookshelf and diploma-laden wall. Industry standard and unimpressive. Matt and Marci settled themselves in the two chairs in front of his desk and accepted the offer of water (since they wouldn’t be accepting much else of what Tower had to offer this evening).

Leather creaked as Tower settled finally into his chair. “Let’s get this over with. She’s been charged with one count of murder one and one count of murder two. What do you—”

“Assault,” Marci said. “She’ll plead guilty to the assault of Vanessa Fisk.”

Tower raised disbelieving eyebrows. “You want me to drop from murder to _assault?_ ”

“You won’t win on murder, so don’t even bother,” Matt said. “Her self-defense claim is solid. Vanessa was the first aggressor.”

“And you can prove that?”

“You can’t disprove that,” Matt shot back. And with affirmative defenses such as self-defense, the burden of proof still rested squarely on the prosecution. “Not beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Tower flipped open the file on his desk. “We have communication between the victim and the defendant, motive, the fact that Mrs. Fisk was killed by a gun, and no other possible suspects. It’ll be imperfect self-defense at best, which leaves you at manslaughter.”

“No,” Matt said.

Tower looked down at the file with a weary sigh. “No?”

Matt folded his hands on Tower’s desk. “My partner and I personally witnessed Fisk threatening to kill her if she ends up in the prison system.”

Tower’s head snapped up. “You didn’t say that before.”

“What did you _think_ Fisk wanted?” Matt asked through gritted teeth.

“Payback,” Tower answered uneasily.

Marci curled her lip. “And you honestly thought he’d be satisfied with anything less than violence?”

Tower looked uncomfortable. “Even if we don’t do manslaughter, everyone knows Mrs. Fisk was killed with a gun. I can’t ignore that.”

“I understand,” Matt said more calmly. “But a deadly weapons charge will get her a minimum prison sentence of two years.”

Tower rubbed at his eyes. “I can’t drop from murder to assault. I can’t do it.”

Marci and Matt were quiet for a moment, letting him feel the pressure. Then Marci leaned forward. “Two assault charges.”

Tower flipped to a different page in his file. “Wesley.”

Matt’s voice was decisive. “You won’t get anything from Wesley unless we give it to you. Her self-defense claim there is ironclad.”

“Convince me.”

“Gladly.” Matt showed his teeth in a smile. “She’s prepared to testify.”

“ _What?_ ” Tower’s chair creaked again.

“Not for any trial related to Vanessa,” Marci explained. “But we are absolutely prepared to go to trial over Wesley’s death. She’ll tell the jury how she was drugged, kidnapped, threatened, and ultimately held at gunpoint. Charming, sympathetic woman like her—you really think you’ll have a shot at _anything_ involving Wesley?”

Tower heaved a sigh.

Matt lowered his voice. “I just told you, a prison sentence is the same as a death sentence.”

“Have some faith in our prison system, Murdock.”

Matt looked scathing. “Which system? The one Fisk used to almost strangle Karen to death after the Union Allied scandal? The one Frank Castle bloodied up with a shank? The one that can’t keep Poindexter from escaping every other week?”

“The one that almost killed Matt when the guards and the inmates went crazy?” Marci added, sing-song.

Tower sat up straighter, like a dog that had spotted a bone. “According to certain footage, Murdock seemed to handle himself.”

If that was _handling_ himself, Matt hated to think what Tower considered a truly dangerous situation.

“Pity about that footage,” Marci went on. “Bet you would’ve liked to do something more with it.”

“What are you saying?” Tower asked slowly.

“We get that two assault charges aren’t much. Well, we have a bit more to offer.”

Matt steeled himself. “My client knows Daredevil’s identity. And she’s agreed to testify.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Matt and Peter are S O F T.
> 
> Also, I'm sorry that so much of this story revolves around men-protecting-Karen. I appreciate that she's a strong female character who gets things done without having to be physically powerful, but it does leave her vulnerable to these types of plots. Especially when she goes around shooting Fisk's faves. But I promise she still has things to do besides being a target.
> 
> Speaking of - guys. Guys, I'm so excited. All the pieces are (finally) in place (I think) so from here on out, it'll be nothing but exploring the main conflicts and themes. Hold onto your hats!


	27. Isn't it Beautiful, the Way We Fall Apart?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "We Fall Apart" by We as Humans (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzh_3lhedlo).

Karen

She was starting to feel a bit guilty for all the times she’d lectured Matt for feeling guilty, which added a new layer of guilt on top of what she already felt.

Guilt wasn’t quite as easy to get rid of as she liked to think. Especially now that Foggy was in a coma and Matt was about to lose everything—because of her. And it wasn’t like she could just move to a different state like she had after Kevin.

So she clung to whatever she could that might make it balance out (or just get close). Like the fact that, although devil’s hell was still drifting through the streets, the number of victims had plummeted after Vanessa’s death and the precinct was filled with distributers.

“Karen, you with me?”

Blinking, she refocused on Matt’s face. They were walking down the street to his church so he could explain what was happening to his mother (and _that_ was what set her off with the guilt in the first place), and he was quizzing her in preparation for her deposition later today. But his tie was loosened and his sleeves were rolled back past his forearms and he was hanging casually onto her arm, looking like nothing more than an adorably rumpled lawyer tired after a long day of work. Definitely not like a guy prepping his wife on how to sell her vigilante husband out so she wouldn't go to prison for murder. “Sorry." She tucked her hair behind her ear. “I’m paying attention.”

“So if they ask you about your knowledge of specific crimes I’ve committed?” he prompted, keeping his voice low even though the time of day (about an hour before lunch) meant there weren’t many pedestrians out and about.

“I tell them fancy parkour isn’t a crime.”

His lips twitched. “You let Marci argue that you only agreed to testify as to my identity, not as to any specific acts,” he corrected. “And if they ask what you and I have discussed about Vanessa since her death?”

“I tell them you’re a good person who won’t let me cuss her out.”

He shook his head. “You let Marci argue with them about marital privilege. And if they ask you what Foggy knew about Daredevil?”

“I’m guessing I should let Marci argue about something.”

“You got it.”

She walked a little closer to bump into him, and he leaned sideways against her, knocking her off course for a second.

“So,” he began suddenly. “Frank is back.”

She just nodded.

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“That he’d come back if he knew I was in trouble? I’m not.” She didn’t give Matt the chance to react to that. “Where, um—where is he?”

It was one of those times she wished his eyes would give him away more, tell her if he was looking at her or avoiding her gaze. “Haunting abandoned warehouses, last I checked. He’ll find you after I’m…you know.”

“You didn’t have to call him. I can take care of myself, and Fisk probably can’t—”

“Nah. He’s your friend.”

What he didn't say was that with his arrest and Foggy in the hospital, she didn’t really have anyone else. It wasn’t like _she_ was best friends with the Valliers, as kind as they’d been to her. “You know he won’t stay for long,” she said quietly. Frank was too much like Matt: he couldn’t stop himself if he thought bad guys were out there hurting people. But he also couldn’t turn Hell’s Kitchen into a shooting gallery again. He’d be caught, and Karen along with him.

“As long as he leaves this city before he starts killing people.”

And there was that harsh edge to Matt’s voice. She’d been expecting it since he first brought up Frank and it was surprising that she was only just now hearing it.

He must’ve sensed something in her body language or breathing patterns or whatever, because he cleared his throat. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“No, hey.” He tightened his grip on her arm. “What is it?”

“Nothing. Frank’s here and you don’t trust him, I get it.”

He raised his eyebrows, clearly unconvinced.

She sighed. It sounded stupid enough in her own head to explain that his distrust of Frank automatically made her feel like he distrusted _her_. She _knew_ he trusted her.

About…about most things, anyway.

She wasn’t actually sure whether he trusted her on the whole killing-people thing.

But it wasn’t like they hadn’t talked about this a thousand times in different ways, so it was probably her fault for feeling so defensive.

“Karen?”

“It’s stupid.”

“Tell me?”

Well, she couldn’t exactly call him out on dodging her questions if she dodged his. At least they were out walking; she focused on avoiding cracks in the pavement and tried to pretend he couldn’t analyze her heartbeat as she admitted how she felt about trust.

He hummed in response and she couldn’t tell if he was agreeing or disagreeing, but at least he wasn’t discounting what she’d said. “So what can I do to make you feel like I trust you?” he asked at last.

She took a second to figure out what he’d just said, and another to think about an answer. “I’m not sure there’s anything you can do.”

His eyebrows drew closer together in dissatisfaction.

“It’s not something I feel all the time,” she said, trying to be encouraging. They were just so tangled up with Stone and Dex and now Frank. It was hard to stop thinking about it. “If you could…stop splitting people into those two categories, maybe. People who kill other people and people who…don’t.”

He looked genuinely startled. “I don’t have categories. And if I did, I’d be in the same category as you.”

No, he hadn't intended to kill Kyle Conway. His categories were between people who _chose_ to kill and people who didn’t. He probably had his own special little category just for himself, actually.

Although it was nice of him to try to convince her otherwise.

“But.” He smiled at her, ridiculously soft. “But I’ll try not to _sound_ like I have categories.”

That was probably the most she could expect.

The church was in view now, its trellised walls offering some shade from the summer heat. And the garden looked newly planted with fresh, darker soil clumped over the older dirt. She slowed her steps as the prospect of seeing Maggie became imminent. “You know, I think I can sit this one out, actually…”

“Karen.” Matt stopped walking to put his free hand firmly on her shoulders. “No one blames you for this.”

“I do. They _should_.”

“It’s my choice,” he reminded her simply, then quirked a smile at her. “And they’ll know that better than anyone. Don’t forget, we’re talking about the nun who watched me try to give up civilian life entirely and the woman who watched me fight for the chance to stay under a collapsing building. If they think I’m being self-destructive—which I’m _not_ —they’ll have no problem blaming me for it.”

“Wow, Matt. Very encouraging.”

“It’s one of my best qualities. C’mon.” His hand slipped around her elbow again, but they weren’t fooling anyone about who was leading whom as he dragged her inside.

Maggie wasn’t in the basement this time. Instead, they found her in the kitchen, sitting up on the counter and occasionally stirring a massive pot of soup. Jessica was at the table, keeping her eyes on her thermos (Karen assumed that whatever was inside wasn’t exactly appropriate for a church, but no one was saying anything) as she talked about—Karen wasn’t sure what she was talking about, actually, because she shut up as soon as she noticed them.

“How much if that did you hear, Murdock?” she demanded as they stepped into the kitchen.

“I wasn’t trying to listen,” he said apologetically.

“You weren’t trying not to,” she groused.

Heading straight for Maggie, he hopped up on the counter beside her close enough that their shoulders brushed together. “You have a very pleasing voice, Jessica. It’s hard to tune out.”

Maggie slapped him with the handle of the spoon. “If you showed up just to annoy Jessica, you can walk back out. She’s helping us.”

“We just came to exchange updates,” Matt said lightly. “How’s it going here?”

“Well,” Jessica drawled, “you and your mom have three things in common: guilt, sarcasm, and painful sincerity.”

Still hovering by the doorway, Karen grinned despite herself. “Sounds right.”

“No trouble,” Maggie reported.

“That kid was trouble,” Jessica argued. “Jacob or Jackson or whatever.”

“Jason.”

“Yeah, him.”

Maggie rolled her eyes. “No _real_ trouble. What about you?”

Karen dug her fingernails into her palms.

“Well,” Matt said, tilting his head back like he was staring at the ceiling, “we made a deal with Tower and he just let us know the judge approved, so we can move forward. Karen’ll get off on two assault charges in exchange for testifying against me. I’m thinking I’ll be arrested once they take her statement.”

Yeah, he just lobbed that little bombshell in the middle of the kitchen like it was no big deal. Maggie’s mouth opened and closed several times, but her eyes kept flitting towards Karen and whatever she was about to say died in her throat.

Jessica, on the other hand, was staring at Matt with abject horror. “You can’t do that!”

“I can, actually. It’s the only—”

“But you’re powered!”

His mouth cracked in a smile. “I’m really not.”

Jessica shot to her feet. “You looked into Trish’s case. You know what happened. They threw her into a submarine prison without a trial _because she’s enhanced_.”

Karen felt her heart drop into her stomach, but Matt just lifted his chin. “I’m sorry that happened, and I can recommend some friends from Colombia who specialize in constitutional law to review her case. But I’ll be fine.”

Jessica curled her lip and jerked her head towards Maggie. “He’s always like this. He threw himself at a zombie ninja’s swords, then stayed under a _falling building_ just to—”

“Hey,” Karen said sharply. “Lay off him.” Like…everything Jessica said was true, but she didn’t need to say it like that.

Although it looked like Matt was right about no one blaming her. Even though they should.

_It’s just what you do, Karen._

She glared at Jessica, who glowered back.

Sliding off the counter, Maggie stepped between them and Karen was surprised she didn’t spontaneously combust under the heat of the crossfire. “That’s enough.”

“I didn’t come to get your permission, Jessica,” Matt said. His voice was the softest in the room.

“You can’t—” Jessica cut herself off and started again. “Look, in prison, you won’t be able to run around saving people. Or lawyering for them. You’ll have to stop all of that, but I don’t think you _can_.” She lowered her voice, scowling. “Being a hero is…just who you are.”

Matt smiled gently. “I could say the same of you, Jones.”

Tossing her head, Jessica spluttered something indecipherable before folding her arms across her chest. “If this is more of your stupid Catholic guilt—”

“It’s not,” he said, and Karen actually mostly believed him, especially when his whole face softened as he glanced in her direction. “It's for Karen.”

Now they definitely blamed her.

He tilted his head downwards but also in his mother’s direction. “I just wanted to tell you.”

 

Stone

Legal research was frustrating, especially for someone like Dex whose life wasn’t exactly simple. Moreover, there were obviously missing pieces, things Stone just didn’t know, that might or might not make a difference.

He thought.

Assuming he was interpreting any of this correctly.

Clearly Stone would need some outside help, but the only two lawyers he knew were not exactly able to focus on Dex. However, there was something Stone could do until he found someone else. He could help Dex discover (or rediscover, as it happened) normal…things. Interests, skills.

In all honesty, Stone was probably not the best person for this job. But he didn’t see anyone else volunteering.

It seemed best to start with something simple. Stone’s apartment was basically devoid of any sustenance, so he rapidly concocted a plan: he would take Dex to a grocery store, let him wander around for an hour without killing anyone or causing any harm or destruction, and thereby prove to Dex that he was capable of being a relatively normal person.

For an hour.

Well, he had to start somewhere.

Stone closed his laptop. “Dex, we’re going to the store,” he announced.

Dex looked up from where he appeared to be trying to sharpen a wooden spoon into a shank. “What?”

“The store,” Stone repeated, trying to sound matter-of-fact.

Dex seemed understandably baffled. “Why?”

“Because my apartment needs groceries.”

“We’re buying…food?”

“Put your shoes on.”

Twenty minutes later, they were wandering through a Walmart where Stone was hopeful they wouldn’t stand out no matter how oddly either of them might behave. Stone found a cart to fill with the basics: fresh vegetables, meat, and pasta if he wanted something cooked, and plenty of microwaveable things because he wasn’t as picky as Matty. Dex either had similar tastes or didn’t think he was invited to object. At any rate, Stone made him push the cart. It kept his hands busy, kept him from picking up a can of ravioli and trying to weaponize it.

“Do you think I’m like him?” Dex asked suddenly, in the middle of a cereal aisle. The only other patron in the aisle was a mother of two in the far end, engaging in some complex negotiations with her five-year-old.

“Him?”

Dex’s face wrinkled in disgust. “The _Punisher_.”

Flipping a box of cereal around to examine the ingredients, Stone made a face of similar disgust. “Well, you don’t use guns.”

“That’s not the only difference.”

Stone pretended to think about it. “He was married,” he commented, purposefully choosing yet another difference he expected Dex to consider superficial.

“He hung people on _meat hooks_.”

That coming from a man who, according to reports, tried to kill someone with a microphone. “Well, it’s creative.”

“I’m not like him.” Dex picked up a cereal protein bar, turning it around in his hands. Stone wondered if he could murder someone with a cereal bar. “I’m _not_.”

Stone couldn’t think of anything to say. He picked up a new box of cereal.

“Stone.” Dex started tapping the bar against his leg. “Stone. Stone.”

“What?” he asked absently. This new cereal was supposed to be the daily breakfast meal of an Olympic athlete. With its sugar content, he seriously doubted that.

Dex snatched the box out of his hand. “They’re staring at me.”

Stone looked up. The mother down the aisle had pushed her kids behind her and was slowly backing up, eyes wide. And, yes, her heart was pounding.

“Mommy,” one of the kids whispered. She shushed him, locked eyes with Stone, and pulled her phone from her pocket.

Dex’s grip dented the box.

Stone grabbed his arm. “Time to go.” Leaving the shopping cart, he shoved Dex back up the aisle. Dex didn’t bother to resist; he stumbled along as they went out a door that was technically entrance-only. Stone jerked him out of the way of an incoming shopper and tried to drag him back towards the apartment, but Dex suddenly strained to get away. When Stone tightened his grip, Dex _threw_ his weight in the opposite direction.

Fine, they could do this here.

Stone shoved him in the direction of his own trajectory until Dex’s back was pressed to a gritty concrete wall by the storage docks behind the store. The whole place smelled of exhaust and cardboard.

Curling his fingers into Dex’s shirt, Stone leaned against him, digging his knuckles into Dex’s chest. “Pull yourself together.”

“They saw me,” Dex whispered. “What if—what if they’re calling the police? What if—”

“They’re not. I’d hear it.”

Dex’s lurched in Stone’s grip. He couldn’t go anywhere, but he tried, struggling for a full forty-five seconds before collapsing back against the wall. “But next time,” he muttered. “Next time.”

“Next time, we’ll be more careful.”

To Stone’s shock, Dex’s lower lip shook; his brown eyes moistened.

Stone froze. Escape attempts were easy to manage and violence, he could handle. But tears?

Then something expressionless masked itself over Dex’s visage, though that didn’t stop his body from trembling. “Go away.”

“No.”

Dex’s head slowly lowered, as if he just now realized that Stone could see that he was trying not to cry. “I can’t—” He cut himself off.

Stone waited a beat. “What?”

“I can’t get better. I’m trying, I’ve _been_ _trying_ , and I _can’t_.” He dragged his wrist across his eyes, sniffed, and said very quietly: “I’m tired.”

“We’ll go back to my apartment. You can rest, and then—”

“I’m tired of trying. It…it doesn’t change anything.”

“It does,” Stone argued. “It _will_.”

Dex looked abundantly unconvinced.

Never let it be said that Stone was ignorant of his own limitations. Here, he was out of his depth. “I’ll call the nun.”

“No!”

Stone frowned as Dex’s heartrate ratcheted up. “I thought you trusted her.”

“D’you know how long she’s been working on me? And it’s not _doing_ anything. I’ll just—” Dex slammed his head back against the wall. “I’ll hurt her or she’ll just quit or—”

“Fine, I’ll call Matty.”

“Doesn’t he want me arrested?”

Considering that the list of people who wanted Dex in jail was exponentially longer than the list of people who didn’t, that didn’t seem like a useful criterion for denying someone’s help.

Dex just rubbed furiously at his eyes. “He wants me in jail, cops want me in jail, people want me in jail, Punisher wants me dead…”

He was spiraling fast, his breathing coming in quick, stuttering gasps, his hand shaking as he clawed at the tears on his face.

Stone was already calling Matty.

“What?” Matty’s voice came through sharp, like he was in the middle of something important, which was probably true.

It wasn’t too late to pretend nothing was wrong. But though that would spare Stone’s pride, it would do nothing to help Dex. “I need someone to talk to Dex. He doesn’t want to talk to your mother.”

“Well, I’d really rather not point him towards any other therapists or priests, given his, ah…history.”

“I know,” Stone said, and waited.

A pause. Then: “What, _me?_ ”

Stone lowered his voice. “He wants to be normal, Matty, despite what he’s done. I know you can relate to that.”

“So can you,” Matty pointed out.

“Well, yes, but I don’t know how to be successful at it.”

Matty laughed musically. “And you think I do?”

Stone felt a flash of irritation—was he going to make him beg? But that would be out of character. Rather, Stone assumed he genuinely didn’t believe he had anything to offer here. And if Stone was incapable of getting through to Dex, he didn’t imagine he’d have better luck convincing Matty of anything. So he set the phone down between himself and Dex. “I’m putting you on speaker.”

“What?” Matty squawked. “Wait—” Then his voice flared louder. “Stone!”

He nudged Dex. “Say hi.”

“…Hi,” Dex said cautiously.

“Uh. Hi, Dex.” Matty hesitated, probably cursing Stone in his head. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

Dex shot a glance at Stone. “We were at the store.”

“Okay,” Matty said, as though that were perfectly normal, even though Stone expected a lecture on it later. “What happened?”

Haltingly, Dex explained about the woman.

“So…no one was hurt?” Matty sounded relieved. “You got out of there. That’s good, that’s really good. I don’t see what—”

“If I can’t even go to the _store_ —”

“You can go to the store,” Matty interrupted. “You did just fine a second ago.”

Dex screwed his eyes shut. “I freaked.”

“That’s better than the alternative,” Matty said patiently.

“It’s not—” Dex’s eyes snapped open. “I can’t even go to the _store_.” He shifted away from Stone like he could block him out from the conversation. “Stone, he got me out of there. Before I could…”

There was suddenly a warning in Matty’s voice. “Were you going to hurt someone?”

“ _No_ ,” Dex snapped. He dug his fingers into his hair. “I don’t—I don’t _know_.”

He wasn’t lying.

“You know what I’ve done to people,” Dex breathed. “If I—if I—” He blinked hard and rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper: “I don’t wanna mess up again.”

“You didn’t mess up.”

“I wanna be _normal_.”

“That probably won’t happen for a while,” Matty said cautiously. “Listen, Dex. What you’ve been through…it won’t be without effect. That doesn’t mean you have to hurt anyone. We can figure out a plan, all right? For if you’re in a situation that might…be difficult.”

Dex’s gaze was glued to the little phone and Stone could _see_ him shrinking, overwhelmed. “I can’t even go to a store. And I just…” Dex clenched his hand into a fist. “I keep hearing them scream.”

Memories flashed across Stone’s vision. He was all too familiar with the echoes.

“I know,” Matty said. There was a pause, like he was gathering his thoughts. “In fact, if I asked you to list all the times you think you’ve messed up in the past year, do you think you could do it?”

Dex’s eyes widened.

“Could you?”

“Y-yeah,” he stammered.

“Right, and every time you go out, every time you talk to someone, you’re thinking about that, aren’t you? You’re remembering.” He didn’t need to see Dex nod; his voice turned sympathetic. “So I want you to take a second, however long you need, to really _think_ about the fact that you can do that. Identify with being the kind of person who can remember all those times, catalogued in your brain. Tell me when.”

To Stone’s surprise, Dex seemed to take him seriously. At least, he waited a decent six seconds before saying, “And?”

“And, knowing this about yourself, I want you to do two things. First, I want you to realize that the fact that you can identify and regret the mistakes you’ve made is a good thing.  I know guilt doesn’t feel good,” he added wryly, “but trust me, it’s a lot better than being blind to the ways you’ve hurt people.”

“Blind,” Dex repeated with a shaky hint of a smile.

“Second thing,” Matty went on. “Once you’ve gotten good and comfortable with identifying all those mistakes you’ve made, I want you to stop counting them.”

The smile disappeared. “Like, let them go?”

“I’m not sure what you mean by that,” Matty answered carefully. “But if you define yourself by everything you’ve done wrong, you’ll never be able to look ahead. And if you try to cover all your mistakes with good behavior…you’ll exhaust yourself.”

That didn’t seem to be stopping Matty from doing the exact same thing.

“Okay?” Matty pressed.

“Okay,” Dex copied him. “Okay.”

Stone tilted his head. Sirens were approaching. Maybe for some other reason, or maybe because the mother from the store had decided to call the cops after all. Reaching over, he turned off the phone. “We need to go.”

 

Matt

He couldn’t be sure if he’d gotten through to Dex. But it was time for Stone to demonstrate just how committed he was, because Matt was about to be out of commission.

The apartment was starting to smell kind of stale. In the past few days, he’d barely been home except to sleep for maybe four hours, change clothes, and grab something to eat. He could smell traces of Marci from when she’d come pick up Frank-the-dog, but now the place was empty. Completely empty. Except for him, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the living room.

Strange that this used to be his way of life.

Strange that coming home to a small family had become normal.

It was nice while it lasted.

Feeling himself start to tense up, Matt opened his eyes, letting the anxiety course through him and then releasing it. That was the goal, anyway. But Karen was giving her statement right now, and he knew what would happen as soon as she was done.

It was okay. All of their clients had been referred out and his mask and clubs were buried under loose paneling on the roof. Now he was trying to meditate. It was…sort of working.

Footsteps on the stairs. He tensed, just like he had every time someone came up those stairs in the past three hours. But he caught her scent, perfume and a bit of sweat and the smells of the precinct and beneath it an aroma that was simply Karen, as distinct as her heartbeat.

Then her key was in the lock and she was toeing her shoes off by the door and padding down the hallway, steps a bit heavier than normal with the weight of the baby. That second heartbeat was getting louder every day.

“How’d it go?” he asked, eyes closed.

“It sucked.”

He frowned. “How was Marci?”

“Oh, no, she was fine. It was everything else that sucked.” Her heartbeat faster and her messed with her hair as she lowered herself to the ground right across from him, all signs that she was nervous. Strangely, he found it easier to calm himself in the face of her nervousness.

Stick would not have understood.

They sat together in silence, waiting for what they both knew was coming. After all, there was really nothing else to say. He’d made his decision.

It felt like exactly what Jack would’ve done, were he in this situation.

Matt couldn’t decide if that was an endorsement.

But, no, this was different. Matt wasn’t about to roll over; he was gonna fight to get back to Karen, back to his kid. And he was gonna make sure his kid knew that.

Eventually, he heard the footsteps on the stairs. It was Brett, and he was kind enough to come alone. Matt stood up, not wanting Karen to be startled by the knock. “It’s them.”

He could taste the slightest hint of salt in the air as she fought back tears.

“Hey.” He reached for her hand and squeezed it. “Marci’s good, and I’m decent. It’ll be—”

“Don’t say fine, I can’t handle it.”

“It’ll be…manageable.” He squeezed her hand again, then went to open the door just as Brett was raising his hand to knock.

Brett jumped. “Murdock!”

“Wish I could say it’s good to see you, Detective.”

Mumbling something about blind jokes at a time like this, Brett shifted his weight. “Matthew Murdock, you know I feel awful about this, but you’re under arrest for suspicion of vigilante activity. You have the right to remain silent…”

Matt let the voice fade out of his consciousness, listening instead to Karen calming up the hallway behind him, stopping a few feet away.

Brett cleared his throat. “Understood?”

“Give me a second?” Matt asked, quietly, and a bit more desperately than he liked.

Brett jerked his head in assent. “Do what you need.”

He took four steps to where Karen was standing with one hand to her mouth and the other over her stomach. Her arms went around him immediately as she pressed searing kisses to his cheek, his jaw, his mouth. Ducking his head, he placed one hand over her heart and the other over her stomach, feeling the two separate pulses and whispering how he loved her, loved both of them.

Then he took a deep breath and stepped back.

“Sorry about this,” Brett muttered. “Really.” Metal clinked together as he slipped the cuffs over Matt’s wrists.

Game on.


	28. I Love the Pressure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Thunder" by Dan Bremnes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE0m01O2Wj4).
> 
> So Marci mentions some of the charges Matt is facing, but if you want the actual list, it's in the post-chapter notes.
> 
> Oh, and for the record, I'm assuming that even if the submarine from the Sokovia Accords still exists, the Sokovia Accords themselves are at least being reworked because ohmygosh they're terrible and also a previous installment already established that in this universe, the Sokovia Accords aren't good law.

Karen

The sun was just rising over the skyline, washing pale blue over the dawn colors, when she arrived at the park. She started thinking, automatically, about how she’d describe it to Matt. The clouds looked like eggshells—did he remember what eggshells looked like? Actually, the whole scene made her think of dying Easter eggs, watching the pastel colors slowly bleed over each other. He could remember dyeing Easter eggs from when he still had vision, couldn't he? Even if his dad wasn’t particularly Catholic, his grandmother was.

And although if he couldn’t see the sky, he’d be telling her about the birds starting to sing or how he could taste the dew on the grass or something equally peaceful.

It wasn’t fair that she got to observe this beauty and he didn’t.

“Hey, Karen.”

She whirled around. Frank Castle stood behind her in a heavy black vest, glancing off over her shoulder, ever on guard. Seeing him in the flesh, her thankfulness that he’d actually come back surprised her, even though the fact that he’d come back didn’t. “You made it,” she breathed.

“Yeah, yeah. Get over here.”

His arms came up around her, surrounding her in the creak of leather and the smell of coffee and gunpowder. Is that how Frank showed up in Matt’s senses? Would Matt ever understand why it made her feel so implausibly safe?

He pulled back. “What do you need?”

She tucked her hair behind her ears. “Well, I need to take the dog to the Valliers.”

His eyes lit up. “Dog?”

“Yeah, we got a labradoodle.”

“But no one’s been taking care of her?”

“Well, she’s been with Marci, Foggy’s wife, but things have obviously been kind of hectic, and Marci’s refusing to let Matt fire her now that he’s her client instead of me…”

Frank’s forehead crinkled. “Marci’s a lawyer? Why would he fire her?”

She shrugged. “I dunno. I don’t think he’s actually tried, but she’s not convinced he won’t. They don’t exactly agree on…anything.”

“Does he agree with _anyone_ on anything?”

She flashed her ring in his face. “At least one person. C’mon. Marci’s gonna be busy enough without taking care of a puppy.” And there was the guilt wriggling in her stomach again.

Frank kept stride easily. “You didn’t say it was a puppy. How old?”

“Eight months.”

Frank snorted. “Ah.”

She shot him a questioning glance.

“Right after he killed Kyle Conway, right? What is it, some kinda murder puppy?” He snorted again. “Labradoodle murder puppy.”

“I guess we just…needed something happy, you know?”

“Yeah?” He looked sideways at her. “What about Fisk’s wife?”

She averted her gaze. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

He stopped. “Why not?”

She kept walking.

Sighing, he caught up. “You got anyone else to talk to? Besides Red. Although I figure that’s more one-way unless actually uses those ears of his more with you than with me.”

“Matt’s the reason I’m not in jail,” she reminded him warningly.

“Yeah, sure, but he doesn’t get what it’s like. How’re you actually _doing_ with all that?”

“You wanna do a feelings talk?” she asked incredulously. "Really, Frank?”

His puppylike eyes searched her face. “I wanna know you’re okay. Shit’s heavy.”

She swallowed, looked away. “You got that right.” She didn’t say anything else, and neither did he, even as they got into Karen’s car, even as they climbed the steps in Marci’s apartment building. Nothing until they stopped outside the door to the actual apartment. “You ever look back and wonder?”

“What about?”

“About the people you’ve…about the people you’ve killed.” She dug for the key in her pocket, keeping her eyes down. “I’m not asking if you _regret_ it. Just if you ever…doubt. Whether you should’ve. Whether it was worth it.”

Rubbing the back of his neck, he let out some cross between a sigh and a groan. “Don’t do that to yourself.”

“Do you?”

“’Course I don’t. The guys I killed, they weren’t just stealing happy meals. Murderers and rapists and shitbags selling child porn…” His fist clenched and unclenched in the edge of her vision. “Doesn’t matter to me if they try to turn everything around tomorrow.”

“You don’t think any of them could, you know…get better?”

“Nope, and they don't deserve the shot anyway.” His voice lowered and he started drumming his fingers against his leg, tempo increasing with his agitation. “The shit they do can’t get undone, and they don’t get to just walk around after that, no matter how sorry they feel, no matter what they promise, no matter if they spend the rest of their life locked up in a cell, ’cause _they still did that_.”

She jammed the key into the lock.

He jerked his head back. “So yeah, I don’t question it. But I’m glad you do.”

Finally, she got the door open and stepped inside. “Who says I do?”

Before he could respond, she unlatched puppy-Frank’s kennel situated in the front hall, which effectively distracted human-Frank. Dropping to his knees, he caught the dog, who veered away from Karen to pay attention to the man who was going to such lengths to greet her so enthusiastically.

“Who’s a good girl?” he rumbled, squishing her face between his hands and screwing his eyes shut as she licked him back. “You’re a good girl!”  He craned his neck to keep his face away from her. “What’s her name?”

“Um…Dog.”

He accepted this. “You’re a good girl, Dog.” He got off the floor to follow Karen into the apartment. Frank bounded after both of them. “What can I do to help?”

 

He got the heavy bag of dog food, the collection of toys, the extra blanket (Karen thought Frank got cold when she wasn’t sleeping on a people-bed; Matt agreed that sleeping with a blanket tucked into her kennel wouldn’t destroy her ability to be a fearsome battle dog in whatever war he was preparing her for), the treats, and the kennel itself all loaded in the car, and Frank sat happily on his lap for the entire drive to the Vallier’s place.

He handed Frank back to her once they got there, so Karen walked Frank up to the door while he unloaded all the stuff and dragged it up to the steps. He was just setting down the bag of dog food when the door flung open and Ella bolted outside.

“Frank!” she yelled excitedly.

Human-Frank actually flinched, but when Ella dove at puppy-Frank, whose entire body shook in equal excitement, human-Frank gestured confusedly at himself and looked at Karen for an explanation.

Nope. She kept her mouth shut. It was Matt’s dog— _he_ should explain the name.

Micah came out behind her, with Maeva just behind him. “Ella, I told you to—” He broke off as his eyes landed on Frank. “Oh.”

“Help me with this, Ella,” Maeva said quickly, ducking forward to grab the bag of food and lug it inside. Ella planted a wet kiss on Frank-the-puppy’s forehead, scooped up the supplies, and darted into the house after Maeva, talking so fast Karen couldn't understand her.

Once his family inside, Micah closed the door and crossed his arms.  He was about as tall as human-Frank, and Karen could literally see them sizing each other up.

“Frank Castle,” Micah said eventually.

Frank stood his ground. “Sir.”

“Thank you for helping out.”

“It’s my pleasure.”

Micah apparently didn’t have anything to say to that, and neither did Frank, because they both just stood there. Glaring.

Karen cleared her throat. “So, um, we should probably…”

The door cracked open again and Ella’s head popped out from behind Micah. “Are they staying for breakfast?”

“No,” Micah said immediately.

Her face fell, then brightened a second later. “Can they come back for dinner?”

“ _No_ , Ella.”

“ _Daddy_.” Her voice dripped with a whine. “Why _not?_ ”

“Listen to your father, girl,” Frank rumbled. “Yeah? Don’t talk back to him like that.”

“It’s a fair question,” Micah snapped.

“Not in that tone of voice,” Frank muttered under his breath.

Karen blinked. What just happened?

“Buttercup, we’ll talk about it inside.” Micah nudged her backwards.

“Yes, Daddy,” she mumbled, then perked up again. “Can I give Karen the cookies, though?” Her whole body turned back towards the hallway, but she waited, poised, until Micah gave his assent. Then she took off.

Micah’s eyes immediately darted back to Frank, even though he nodded his head at Karen as he explained, “Maeva’s been teaching her to cook. Simple things, like peanut butter cookies. Only three ingredients, so…hard to mess up.”

“And she made them for me?”

“Well, we’re trying to help her find alternate ways of helping people, aside from…” His eyes narrowed at Frank. “You know.”

Frank looked confused, but had no opportunity to question Micah because Ella was back, thrusting a Tupperware at Karen. It was jammed full of cookies and still warm.

“Here!” she shouted. “For you _and_ Matt _and_ the baby!”

Karen stared at Micah and mouthed, “ _Matt?_ ”

He just shook his head.

Had they not told her about the arrest? That was gonna blow up in everyone’s faces. Not that Karen was in any position to lecture them about it, although she wondered what story they’d told Ella to explain why Frank-the-dog needed to stay with them.

She settled for just thanking them again, and accepting Ella’s fierce hug, and trying not to laugh while Ella shuffled her feet in front of human-Frank, clearly trying to figure out how to say goodbye to him. Finally, she stuck out her hand, and Micah looked like he was on the verge of a conniption when Frank bent down to shake it oh so gently, swallowing her much smaller hand in his.

“Good to meet you, ma’am,” he whispered, and winked.

Micah snaked his hand over Ella’s shoulder, tugging her backwards. “Karen, call if you need anything.” And with that, he pulled Ella inside the house and shut the door.

 

Marci

It was a good thing Matt was blind.

Her briefcase had exploded over the table where she was meeting him and she was confident enough in her legal prowess to admit that none of the research was her best work. It was just…she looked at the worst paper again: a single sheet with the list of charges typed neatly in twelve-point font.

It was a freakin’ laundry list of charges. Multiple counts of _thirteen_ different felonies, not to mention multiple counts of six different misdemeanors. And…

“I mean, loitering?” She jabbed her finger at the list. “Really?”

“Well, I linger in public places wearing a mask,” Matt said reasonably. He was in cuffs, although she’d seen enough footage of Daredevil in action to know that wasn't necessarily inhibiting him. He was also not wearing his glasses, making his face look strangely naked. Vulnerable. She'd only seen him without his glasses once, when he and Foggy had both gotten too drunk at law school and they'd called her to pick them up.

“I know what the statute says," she retorted. "I just think Tower should be questioning his sanity for charging Daredevil with _loitering_. Does he have no shame?” She scanned the list again, looking for anything else outrageous. Some of the charges—like tampering with a witness, a juror, or evidence—were obviously speculation: Matt was a lawyer, Matt was a vigilante, therefore Matt’s vigilante activities must extend to his legal work, right? She frowned. “You haven’t actually tampered with any jurors, have you?”

He adjusted his glasses on his nose. “Does untampering with a juror count?”

Ugh. “Is there _evidence_ of your untampering?”

“I told the guy who was threatening her to leave the city. Haven’t seen him since.”

She resisted the temptation to point out that he hadn’t seen _anyone_ recently. One of them had to be an adult. So, if Tower didn’t have actual evidence on the law-related charges, that left them with…nine different types of felonies and five types of misdemeanors.

She needed a drink.

“Finished?” Matt asked politely, like he was checking whether she’d finished her coffee, not whether she’d finished reading the list of his criminal offenses that would lock him up for the rest of his life.

She spent an extra minute reviewing the list just to annoy him. “All right. I’m done.” She took a sip of her coffee. “So we’ll want an updated report about your eyes.”

“Why, are they no longer brown?”

“They’re a lovely mix of green and gold,” Marci said flatly.

Matt grinned. “I’ll take it.”

“And I thought of something.”

From his expression, he was already certain he was not going to like it.

“What if the other side requests a psych eval?”

His mouth twisted in disgust.

She smirked. “ _They_ have to pay for it, and _you_ get a psych eval. Win-win.”

“Hilarious.” He leaned forward. “Fine. My turn. I wanna go to trial and I don’t wanna pretend I’m not Daredevil.”

“ _What?_ ” She was already three steps ahead of him, but she pretended to be horrified. She wanted to circle around every other option before sharing her actual plan not because she needed to go over all the alternatives again but to test him: what he was thinking, what he was prepared to do.

“Look,” he said confidently. No, not confidently. Not quite carelessly, either. Something in between. “Marci, you’re good. But with the number of charges they can bring against me, what good is a plea gonna do?”

“I can turn you into some kind of informant.”

“And that’ll knock it down to, what, fifteen life sentences instead of fifty? Merry Christmas to me. Do you know how many Daredevil fights they have on record?”

“Can we please talk about our theory of the case before jumping straight to suicide? And what do you think’s gonna happen at trial, you idiot? You think you’ll fare any better under the vicissitudes of a jury?”

His sunglasses glinted. “I think I’d like the chance to tell them my story.”

“ _Matthew_ ,” she groaned. “Could you, for once, act like a defense lawyer. Trials are—”

“Unpredictable, I know,” he finished for her. “But I’m not just a defense lawyer.” One corner of his mouth twitched slightly upwards and something that looked suspiciously like relief relaxed the stiff line of his shoulders. “I’m Daredevil.”

She rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to admit that.”

He was now looking at her with stupid earnestness written across his face. “Karen’s going to give away my identity.”

“So we impeach her, we tear apart her credibility—”

His mouth pinched angrily. “I’m not doing that.”

“Maybe we should return to the subject of a psych eval.”

“C’mon, Marci, you really wanna waste our time convincing the jury that Karen somehow _mistook_ her blind husband for a vigilante?”

“Karen doesn’t exactly have a history of truthfulness,” Marci pointed out.

“No,” he growled.

“I’m serious. Foggy’s told me all about—”

“We’re not going there.”

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. Admitting that Matt was Daredevil—or, at least, not hinging his defense on disproving that he was Daredevil—didn’t actually undermine the plan she was considering. It was just disconcerting. “We need to motion for a change of venue. The jury will be less biased, plus we’ll make the state pay to transport all their criminal witnesses, which might…” She sighed. “And you’re shaking your head.”

“The jury in Hell’s Kitchen will be biased in my favor.”

“Foggy said you were thinking something like that.”

He lifted his chin. “Am I wrong?”

She picked at a chip in her nail polish. She was not being paid enough for this.

“Do you know how many officials asked for my autograph when I was booked? Nine different cops and one prison guard who came all the way over just to say that watching Fisk sit alone in his cell is the best thing that’s ever happened to him.”

“Sounds like that guy needs to get out more.” She folded her hands on the desk. She was willing to let him have his Hell’s Kitchen jury if he wanted as long as he didn’t fight her on this next issue. She couldn’t imagine why he _would_ fight it; but, then, she couldn’t imagine why anyone would run around in devil horns either. “You need an affirmative defense.”

Looking strangely furtive, he adjusted his glasses. “You’re talking about defense of others. Right?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Is that not what you’re doing very night?”

It was like she’d flipped a switch; his whole body tensed up and she could actually see a vein in his neck as he started speaking, not eloquently but fast and stammering: “We’d have to show the—the same factors as with self-defense, including p-proportionality. _And_ we have to convince the jury that I—that I’m never the first aggressor, and who—”

She held up a hand before he could work himself up into a froth. “Shut up for five seconds. We can—”

He did not, in fact, shut up for five seconds, or even one single second. “—and who could we even call to testify about any of that? The people I f-fight every night won’t exactly—”

She shoved her chair back; the resulting screech of metal in the tiny room was torture to her own ears and it certainly closed Matt’s mouth, and his eyes, in a pained wince. “I don’t care about the law right now. I care about you.”

He exhaled slowly. “There’s a first.”

She ignored that. Defense of others was an affirmative defense typically classified as a justification rather than excuse. An excuse defense (such as provocation) acknowledged that the defendant’s behavior was undesirable, but insisted that it was still reasonable for the average person. A justification defense, however, argued that the defendant’s behavior, though technically illegal, was actually desirable in the community. Wasn’t that exactly what Matt believed? “I thought you thought of your whole Daredeviling thing as protecting Hell’s Kitchen.”

A muscle flashed in his jaw.

“Didn’t you use defense of others with Kyle Conway?”

His eyes dropped at the mention of the name. “I used self-defense,” he corrected softly.

“It’s the same thing!”

“It’s really not.” He’d left one hand on the table so she could see his fingers rubbing nervously together. “With Kyle Conway, it was—it was a one-time thing, and I didn’t mean it to go so far.”

“Fine, forget Conway. What’s your problem with defense of others _now?_ ”

“There’s no problem,” he said immediately.

She didn’t believe him for a single second. She just raised one eyebrow, knowing the effect was lost on him but hoping the wait of her judgmental silence would have an impact.

But he just sat there, steadily increasing his resemblance to a guilty puppy.

Her patience snapped; she slapped her hand down onto the table. “ _Matt_ —”

“I go too far!” he burst out.

She squinted at him.

“I go too far,” he repeated through his teeth. “It’s not proportional. It’s not necessary.”

“But can they prove that?” she asked testily.

His glasses glinted in the harsh lighting. “You want me to lie.”

He was such an oxymoron. How would Foggy handle this? Foggy could get through to him, right? Maybe? “I want you to act in your own best interest, and in the interest of your family.”

He hesitated. Weighing the words. Thinking things through for once, she hoped. Then he sighed. “I’m not saying I won’t go along with this. I just…I didn’t…”

“What, didn’t think of it?” Marci didn’t believe that either.

He ducked his head. “Didn’t want to suggest it,” he mumbled.

Interesting. “Well, I’m suggesting it.”

“Understood.”

She raised an eyebrow. “And you’ll cooperate? You’ll deal with any guilt issues at church, not in court?”

He looked mildly offended, but didn’t bother trying to defend himself. “I’ll cooperate.” He cleared his throat, sincerity clogging his voice. “Thank you, Marci.”

She brushed off his thanks with an annoyed twitch of her head, wondering what other arbitrary points he was gonna take issue with. Before she could move on to her next point, however, he was speaking again, and the earnest look was back.

“Uh…Marci? Is that what you think?”

“Is what what I think?”

“That…that what I do is defending others. Justifiably.”

She swallowed her immediate response and just studied him. He couldn’t possibly be bothered with her opinion, could he? The Matt Murdock she knew from law school had always been coolly unaffected no matter what barbs she threw at him, even when Foggy Bear got all flustered. From what she heard, he was even more self-assured even after leaving Landman and Zack. But there he was, asking for her verdict.

She smoothed out a crease in her skirt. “You’ve saved Foggy and me at that restaurant, and you saved Foggy at the Bulletin. So.”

“That’s against Benjamin Poindexter. That’s not the same thing as…as running around stopping random people from getting into fights.”

Wasn’t it? She rolled her eyes. “If you want to know whether I think Hell’s Kitchen is better off with Daredevil in it, the answer is yes.”

His head canted just barely to the side, and she still couldn’t see his eyes, but his restless hand relaxed.

“And so,” she said crisply, redirecting them, “we just have to figure out which witnesses can speak to imminence, necessity, and proportionality. Once we—”

“The, uh…” He ran a nervous hand through his hair. “The proportionality is still a problem.”

“We’ll deal with that depending on who Tower calls as witnesses.”

He perked up. “Can I testify?”

Normally, letting the defendant testify was a last resort. But it wouldn’t really change anything for Tower to ask Matt if he was Daredevil since Tower would already ask Karen the same thing. And Matt’s testimony could be useful. He would be able to explain, better than anyone else, what it meant for him to hear all the people suffering every night. It would play on sympathies, go towards proving a standard defense-of-others argument…and also lay foundation for an enhanced-defense-of-others argument she was toying with in her head. “We’ll think about it,” she said. “So we’ve got our theory, but we still need a theme. Something catchy.”

Matt’s expression darkened; he was giving her whiplash. “Foggy always came up with our themes. Anything I ever came up with fell flat.”

Digging a tiny stress ball out of her bag, she started tossing it in the air. Must’ve picked up the habit from Foggy at some point. “You know, some people call you a superhero.”

“Are you trying to compliment me?” Matt asked suspiciously.

Since a disdainful look really wouldn’t cut it, she let her disdain seep into her voice. “I’m trying to give the jury something favorable to compare you to.”

“As long as it’s not Danny Rand.”

“Fair. I was thinking more like Spiderman anyway, but…” Cocking her head, she lowered her voice  like she was about to impart some delicious secret that he was lucky to be hearing. “I wanna get people talking about Daredevil and the Avengers in the same sentence.”

 

Matt

He felt a swooping sensation in his stomach. “Uh…”

“Not because you’re ready to go fight aliens or evil robots or whatever, but because no one’s gonna try to stop the Avengers from doing what they do.”

“The Sokovia Accords—”

“Aren’t good law anymore,” she interrupted. “It didn’t work.”

“Because they were unconstitutional.”

“And pissed people off,” she said matter-of-factly. “Which I think is what’ll happen if Tower tries to imprison Daredevil.”

He wryly raised his wrists to indicate the cuffs.

“It’s not in the news yet, I checked. Tower’s buying himself time to figure out how he wants to spin this. Why? Because he knows arresting you isn’t the same as arresting the Punisher.”

“Or because he doesn’t want to draw the attention of whoever decided to put Trish Walker in a submarine,” he argued, shoving his nervousness about that possibility into the back of his mind.

“I swear I won’t let that happen.” Her heartbeat was firm, unwavering. She took a deep, slow breath. “Look, if you testify, you’re gonna have to explain how you do what you do, given your blindness.”

“That’s not relevant.”

“Well, it could be.”

“Excuse me?”

She folded her hands over the mess of papers on the table. “First off, dodging the issue will look suspicious, so we’re not doing that. Getting hit in the face with toxic chemicals, however, looks sympathetic. So you might as well accept it: if you insist on testifying, you have to explain your powers.”

“They’re—they’re not _powers_ ,” he stammered, “and, what, you want people to—to dissect my _abilities_ and act like that justifies me breaking the law?”

“Hmm, we’ve gotta work on curing that stutter.”

“Marci!”

She ignored him, as usual. “I’ll spell it out. You didn’t ask for your powers, so it’s not your fault you can hear people screaming for help ten blocks away. It’s not your fault that you’re _always_ in a position to defend others, even if your defense of them turns violent.”

It was a thousand times more complicated than that and she knew it. There was the fact that he was trained, and that he frequently involved himself before the first blow ever landed, and that his force wasn’t exactly proportional, and that he never called the police until after he’d dealt with the assailants however he saw fit. “Marci,” he said helplessly.

Her posture finally softened somewhat. “We have to show them you’re not looking for a fight,” she said quietly. “I can’t think how to do that except for showing them, somehow, just a hint of what you hear every night.”

He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from arguing. She was right. She was absolutely right. With the amount of fights he got into every night, there was no way he’d be able to convince the jury that he wasn’t the first aggressor, that he wasn’t _looking_ for fights, without explaining the reach of his senses.

Only two problems. First: he usually was looking for a fight. But Marci was also right that he should probably fudge on the honesty and deal with the guilt with Father Driscoll.

Second: talking about his senses went against every instinct he had. Some of it was the result of Stick’s training—never let the enemy know your strengths _or_ your weaknesses, and heightened senses constituted both—but some of it was also because letting go of his secrets always felt oddly like letting go of old friends.

But…Marci was right.

She was also generous, letting him sit there in silence and work through the implications. Logically, getting the jury—and by extension, all of Hell’s Kitchen—to believe in his abilities was no more earth-shattering than getting them to believe that he was Daredevil. So why did it feel so much more…personal?

Marci’s phone started chirping, interrupting his meager attempt at introspection. “It’s Tower,” she hissed.

Matt immediately gave her his full attention.

She put the phone on speaker, which wasn’t exactly necessary, but it was a nice gesture. “What do you want?”

“I don’t want anything,” Tower replied. “I just wanted to warn you. I, ah…I’m sure it won’t surprise you to learn that I’ve been in contact with Wilson Fisk throughout these proceedings…”

“No, I’m shocked,” Marci drawled.

“So I thought you should know that he is, ah, upset about Karen’s deal, and now he’s adamant about participating more directly.”

“Which means?”

“He wants to testify against Murdock.”

Matt blinked. “He wants to be a witness?” That was a terrible idea for Tower. With Karen’s admission of Matt’s identity, anything Fisk could say would be utterly redundant but incredibly prejudicial against Tower’s case. If Tower wanted a criminal to testify as to personal encounters with Daredevil, he could easily find a more appealing one than Fisk.

“Yep.” Oddly, Tower didn’t sound to upset about it. “And I’m going to let him.” There was an awkward pause. “Obviously, it won’t matter what he says, not with Karen’s testimony, so…”

“Why tell us?” Marci asked suspiciously.

“Well…I guess I do want something from you after all,” Tower admitted. “I want you to tear him apart.”

Despite everything, Matt felt a grin spread across his face. “Consider it done.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear readers, I am, as always, condensing the timeline on the procedural stuff. This kind of trial would realistically take what, two years before it ever actually goes before a jury? But for plot and pacing and all that, I am exerting creative license and fast-tracking everything.
> 
> And yeah, I might be missing something, but from what I can tell, Matt could be charged under New York law with (and some of these really crack me up):  
> o Kidnapping (first degree – felony)  
> o Assault (with a deadly weapon) (against police) (first degree – felonies)  
> o Terrorism (felony)  
> o Manslaughter (first degree – felony)  
> o Tampering with a witness (felony)  
> o Intimidating a victim/witness (first / second degree – felony)  
> o Strangulation (first degree – felony)  
> o Menacing a police officer (felony)  
> o Criminally negligent homicide (felony)  
> o Hindering prosecution (second degree - felony)  
> o Unlawful wearing of a body vest (felony)  
> o Menacing (second degree – misdemeanor)  
> o Criminal possession of a weapon (fourth degree – misdemeanor)  
> o Criminal obstruction of breathing or blood circulation (misdemeanor)  
> o Criminal trespass (second degree – misdemeanor)  
> o Prohibited use of weapons (misdemeanor)  
> o Loitering (violation)
> 
> Tower is assuming, by virtue of Matt's profession, that he's also guilty of:  
> o Tampering with physical evidence (felony)  
> o Tampering with a juror (fist degree – misdemeanor)  
> (Tower's also assuming without evidence, for the same reason, that Matt's guilty of tampering with witnesses. It's just that we happen to know that's actually true. He definitely "tampered" with Hoffman, for example.)


	29. Broken Records Repeating These Vanities

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Butcher's Mouth" by Emery (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bTXKK9cFDE).

Stone

There was a reason why Stick always said to push people away. When you let them get close, they affected you.

Especially if they were _soft_.

Well, Stone wasn’t soft. Nor was Matty, usually. Matty certainly wasn’t soft around Dex, and that was what mattered. Dex, Stone decided, needed to be exposed to softness until it started affecting him. Ideally in a controlled environment.

For all that Dex had panicked at the store, he hadn’t had a flashback and hadn’t resorted to physical violence, which was the only reason Stone felt comfortable even allowing Dex to know the Valliers’ address.

Matty would still probably not approve.

Matty didn’t need to know.

And since Matty was under arrest, he _wouldn’t_ know. Not until it was too late.

“What am I doing here?” Dex muttered, crouching beside Stone in the Valliers’ shed.

“Observing normalcy.”

“Didn’t we try that?”

“At a grocery store,” Stone reminded him, irritated that Dex didn’t see the difference. “This is a home.”

Dex scratch behind his ear. “Uh-huh.”

“There, do you smell that? They ordered pizza. It doesn’t get any more domestic.”

“It’s probably greasy. They probably put pineapple on it.”

Stone sighed. “Just…listen, all right?”

“To what?”

To Maeva singing off-key while she threw paper plates. To Matty’s dog barking. To Spiderman (hello, Spiderman) insisting that he didn’t need more than one slice, it was fine, he wasn’t that hungry. To Micah arguing with him. To Ella trying to pronounce the word “metabolism.”

But, of course, Dex hadn’t been trained. Stone wondered briefly what it would take to teach him to make full use of his senses, but quickly tabled the idea until after his more homicidal tendencies had been curbed. Perhaps he could somehow convince the family to open a window so Dex could eavesdrop for the greater good.

Fortunately, after only waiting a few more minutes, the labradoodle needed to go outside and Ella took it upon herself to accomplish the mission. She slipped outside with the puppy, who ran straight for the shed.

“One moment,” Stone murmured. He took two steps towards the door to the shed, stopped, and looked back. “ _Stay there_.”

“Yes, mom,” Dex grumbled.

Rolling his eyes, Stone ducked outside, intercepting the puppy before she could reach the shed.

“Stone!” Ella shouted gleefully, stopping right in front of him and staring up at him with wide eyes. She had pizza sauce on the corner of her mouth.

“Don’t shout, you’ll give away our position.”

“Position?”

Focusing on warding off the dog, Stone didn’t bother to explain. “Ella, I need you to open—”

“You saved me,” she interrupted.

“Excuse me?”

“Back, um, a while ago. When I was at my grandma’s? Dad said Matt said someone tried to hurt me.” She frowned. “He’s trying to get me to stay close to home and not run around so much, I think.” The frown cleared. “But he said Matt said there was someone else who saved me. Someone Matt trusts. Who’s as good at fighting as he is. That was you, wasn’t it?”

He only remembered bits and pieces of that night when he’d finally experienced devil’s hell, but he remembered seeing the assassin slinking through the suburban streets. Was there any point denying it? “Yes.”

“What happened?”

Perhaps he shouldn’t tell her this. Perhaps it would frighten her. But the little girl in front of him had been through so much already, and she didn’t seem frightened. “Well, little one, do you remember when there was a drug that made you sick? Gave you nightmares while you were still awake?”

She paled. Maybe bringing it up hadn’t been a good idea.

“I stopped that from happening again,” he said firmly.

“Stopped it how?”

“I stopped the person who wanted to do it to you.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Stopped them how?”

He sighed. “Don’t worry about it. I just need you to—”

“Remember when we were in the tunnels?” she interrupted again.

How could he forget?

“Remember how…how I thought it was my fault that Matt got in trouble and couldn’t be a lawyer, but you said it wasn’t? You said it would’ve happened to Matt anyway?”

“You have a good memory.”

She scooted closer. “Remember why?”

He sighed. “Because Matt lets people in, even though some people would say he’d be better off keeping himself separate from them.”

“Well, that was _part_ of it.”

He frowned.

“You said it’s because you don’t let your enemies get back up.” Her eyes narrowed, piercing him straight to his soul. Or something like that. “You said you kill them.”

Her new father was going to kill him. Or Matty was going to…not kill, no, that was the point of this conversation. Matty was going to stab him somewhere nonlethal but painful. “Ella, girl—”

“So how come you didn’t do that to the person who was trying to hurt me?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it. He had. Did she not know?

After scrutinizing him for a moment longer, she nodded her head triumphantly. “You learned your lesson, didn’t you? And just for that…” Eyes bright with mischief, she pulled something out of her pocket.

A cookie so studded with melted chips of chocolate that it was all but falling apart.

“For you.” She held it out to him.

He couldn’t accept that.

Her eyes narrowed again. “Take it.”

He took it.

 

Matt

Unsurprisingly, Matt’s bail was set sky-high. His reputation as an otherwise upstanding member of the community was pretty much the only factor in his favor, and didn't help much when weighed against Daredevil's notoriety. But Karen had refused to consider not paying it, and he couldn’t help feeling relieved on top of grateful. He knew from his trial after Conway’s death (murder, it was murder, stop lying) that jail was, for him, a special kind of torture. But he also knew that as soon as the other criminals found out what he’d been arrested for, it would be open season on Matt Murdock.

He figured if he had to fight for his life, he’d rather it be _after_ the trial.

Plus, being out on bail meant he could have one very important conversation.

Micah had called him up shortly after Matt told him about the plea deal (because Micah had texted him just to “know how things were going,” and wasn’t that something—having people besides Foggy and Karen and Maggie who cared about what was happening in his life), asking what he could do to help and asking if Matt cared who told Ella about it. Letting Micah and Maeva tell her would be easier, but Matt couldn’t help feeling that she deserved to hear it from him. And, selfishly, he knew he’d get plenty of hugs out of it if he told her himself.

So now Micah showed him into the living room, Ella talking her ear off about a new friend she’d met at summer school while Frank frolicked between his legs, doing her best to trip him up. He sat down on the floor and resigned himself to the feel of Frank’s tongue on every inch of his face.

“I think she missed you,” Ella said conspiratorially, sitting down across from him and petting Frank’s butt.

“You think?” He couldn’t really breathe with Frank all over him, so he finally wrestled the puppy down with one arm, pinning her to the floor and drawing in a deep breath. “Hey, Ella? What was Stone doing here?”

Because Stone’s scent clung to the shed in the backyard. He’d been here last night at the latest—with _Dex_. Neither of them had gone inside, but that didn’t really help Matt feel better. Then again…Stone had gotten control of the situation at the grocery store. Maybe Stone was figuring out how to deal with Dex. Or maybe Dex was actually getting better.

Ella giggled. “He wanted me to open a window so his friend could hear us.”

Matt furrowed his brow. “Why?”

“Dunno. Dad wouldn’t let me open them anyway ’cause it’s too expensive to keep the house cool.” She sighed, clearly communicating that few people in her life understood the weight of her responsibilities. “So then he and his friend left.”

“Did you talk to his friend?”

She shook her head.  “Who was he?”

Matt grimaced. He didn’t want to lie, but he also didn’t want to tell her that Stone had brought the guy who’d once shot at her (and successfully shot Matt) at the church, and the guy who was behind her near-overdose on devil’s hell. “He’s just someone Stone’s trying to help.”

“By teaching him to fight, or teaching him how to make cookies?”

Matt laughed. “I don’t know about the cookies, but that’s actually a good idea. He’s _definitely_ not teaching him how to fight. But that’s not why I’m here.”

“Mom and Dad said you had to tell me something.” From her tone, it was clear that she knew it wasn’t good.

“Yeah. Uh. I’m just…probably not gonna be around as much for a while.” Or forever.

She gave a tiny, dismayed gasp. “You’re going away?”

Better to just spit it out, like ripping out stitches. “I’m gonna be on trial again.”

“Like before? When I told Micah about what you did to my dad and he went and told, um…” She faltered, forgetting Tower’s name or job or something.

“Your dad did the right thing.”

She completely ignored that. “ _Why?_ ”

“Well, they…they know I’m Daredevil.”

She flinched, full-bodied. “But I didn’t say anything!”

“I know,” he said quickly. “I did.”

“You _told_ them?” She slapped his arm, making Frank jump in shock. “Matt! It’s supposed to be a secret!”

“Hey, _hey_.” Catching her wrist, he lowered her hand back to her side but keeps his hand on her arm, stroking his thumb over her soft skin. “I know. And I wouldn’t have told them if it weren’t important. It was…” He searched for the words to tell her without making her blame Karen. Or herself, since she was the reason Karen had shot Vanessa in the first place. (Did Ella know that?) “It was part of a trade. Kind of.”

She made a confused noise.

“Anyway, so now I’ve gotta talk to them about why I do what I do.”

“But why is it bad, though?”

“It’s breaking the law, Ella.”

“But you’re _helping_ people.”

Her heart beat and her voice rang with the strength of her conviction. Matt hesitated. Maybe it was selfish to test her just to reassure himself, but…from the mouths of babes, right? “Ella,” he began carefully. “You know I hurt people.”

“Huh?”

“I give people sad colors.”

“ _Matt_. I’m not a little kid anymore.”

“Sorry.” She was right and wrong at the same time. She’d had to grow up too fast in too many ways, but she was still little Ella, shockingly innocent. The world was still too dark for her.

“And _of course_ it’s good that you help people. I guess sometimes you have to hurt other people to do it, but you only hurt bad people.”

That wasn’t the issue. The issue was _how much_ he hurt bad people.

“You’ll tell them, right? You’ll explain it? You’re good at explaining things.”

He winked. “You think so?” Then he smiled softly. “Yeah, Ella. I’ll do my best.”

When she took a deep breath, he realized what she was about to say just before she said it: “I can help!”

“Ella, _no_.”

She gave an indignant huff. “Why not?”

“Because…” He took his own deep breath. She was still a little kid, but she was right; she also wasn’t. She deserved an actual conversation. “Tell me why you want to help.”

This time, her loud huff of air is impatient. “Because I _love_ you.”

“I—” His mouth opened and closed stupidly. He loved her, had told her as much when she’d cried in the underground tunnels, overwhelmed by guilt. But while it was pretty obvious that she loved him, she tended to express it in drawings and hugs and hot chocolate. He cleared his throat. “I mean, what do you want to do to help?”

He caught a subtle scraping sound as she ran her tongue under her teeth, humming a little in thought. “It’s a trial, right? Like when my dad test—testa—testified?”

“Same idea, yeah.”

“I could do it!”

He raised his eyebrows. “You wanna testify?”

She nodded firmly. “I can tell them that what you do is good.”

He was about to start explaining that whether what he did was good wasn’t the issue. Except…it pretty much was, really. That was the whole point of the defense-of-others argument: that what he did was against the law, yes, but _good_.

“Can I?” She tugged on his arm, dissatisfied with his lack of a reaction. “I can tell them how you and Foggy let me stay at Everett’s and get adopted and how you rescued me when those people kidnapped me and you always hang out with me and you came to my birthday party and saved me from that drug and you teach me to fight!”

“Maybe leave out that last part,” he said quickly.

“Why?”

He tilted his head, trying to get a clearer read of her. “You really wanna do this?”

Another eager nod. “ _Please_. I wanna help. It’d help, right?”

Well…if they were really going to sell a defense-of-others argument to the jury, what better way was there to persuade twelve ordinary people that what he did was worth it than to let them come face-to-face with Ella Vallier?

 

Marci

The first day of court—actual court—always felt like it came too soon. There was always that sense that she’d left a stone unturned somewhere. Not that anyone would know it to look at her face.

All the pretrial matters were accounted for. Tower had agreed to whittle the charges down to a several counts of assault (against police and with a deadly weapon), several counts of strangulation (with medical records to potentially support them), one count of kidnapping, and several counts of menacing police officers. There wasn’t enough evidence for Tower to feel confident bringing the other charges. She almost wished he had, since it would probably leave the jury confused. But, no, Tower was streamlining his case, focusing on the violence Matt doled out.

The upside was, nothing shocking had come up in discovery (well, deposing the Metro-General physician Tower was calling had been horrifying, but not _surprising_ ). And the case was keeping her mind firmly away from a certain hospital room with a certain lawyer who was infinitely more qualified to be taking care of a superpowered vigilante client.

Judge Lauria was assigned to Matt’s case, which was just fantastic. She still hated Foggy and Matt after having presided over one of their cases before, where they appealed one of her judgments and won. Unfortunately, their motion for a new judge failed. Matt shrugged it off. Marci was pissed.

“It’s fine,” Matt said. He met her in a courthouse hallway wearing one of his nicest dark gray suits, hair smartly combed, sporting his overly-dramatic ruby glasses with his black satchel over one shoulder and his long cane in his other hand. Probably enjoying not being in handcuffs, since parading a defendant around in handcuffs was extremely prejudicial, even if there was the slightest possibility that the defendant was capable of taking out everyone in the courthouse if he wanted. “It just means we need to be smarter.”

“It’s not _right_ ,” Marci seethed. “The whole point of judges is that they’re supposed to be unbiased. A judge with a personal vendetta completely distorts the fairness of the justice system!”

“Didn’t realize you were such a believer in the fairness of the justice system,” Matt remarked, pretending he couldn’t tell that she was glaring at him.

“I am when it’s my client,” she shot back. She had an image to maintain.

“It’s fine. We just need to plan around the fact that any questions that invite judicial discretion will probably be decided against us.”

“I get that you’re trying to sound sweet and optimistic, but please…stop.”

“The appellate decision was a recent one,” Matt insisted. “I’m pretty sure Tower has no idea that Lauria hates me. So we’ll just be a bit more conservative, especially with objections. But I bet the objections we do make will go our way, since Lauria is probably still skittish about another appeal.”

“So does Lauria’s attitude help us or hurt us, Matt? Make up your mind.”

“Both,” he said confidently.

“Stellar logic. I’m really getting the summa cum laude thing.”

He smirked knowingly, then sobered. “You know, Ella asked if she could testify.”

This could not possibly be going anywhere good. “And you told her no, because she’s seven years old.”

“Yeah, but…if Karen’s gonna admit that I’m Daredevil anyway, what’s the harm in letting her?”

“I don’t know, Matt,” Marci said sardonically. “What’s the harm in letting a little girl blame herself for you going to jail for the rest of your life?”

“She’ll probably blame herself either way. At least this way, she gets to…fight.”

Oh, of course. Because everything always came back to fighting with him.

“I’m not convinced it’s a great idea either,” he said hurriedly. “But it’s something to think about.”

“Okay, well, think about it later. We gotta get to the courtroom.” She took off in that direction, only to jump when a larger hand wrapped around her elbow.

“Calm down,” Matt muttered, falling into step beside her like he belonged there, holding his cane lightly in front of him. “You don’t need to be nervous. I’ve heard your opening, it’s great.”

“You only think that because it flatters you.”

“I’m objective,” he protested.

“You’re the furthest thing.” The bailiff let them into the courtroom and she knew her adrenaline spiked, knew he could tell somehow, so she purposefully steered him too far to the left of the aisle so he had to angle his body to avoid crashing into the spectator seats. He did not look amused, but at least he wasn’t telling her to calm down again.

It was just…not only were there reporters circling the courthouse outside like piranhas, guaranteeing that her reputation would go up in flames if this case went sideways, but was she supposed to face Foggy if he woke up to find out she’d let his best friend get put away for three, four life sentences?

Finally, they settled down at the defense table. Tower was already there, his notes arranged neatly at the prosecution’s table, chatting with one of the bailiffs. An audience began to trickle in, including Karen and Maggie. Karen was starting to show, and the pressure of the trial settled a little more heavily on Marci’s shoulders. No Jessica Jones, even though she was apparently staying with Maggie for a while. Smart. The last thing they needed was for the jury to think Matt and Jessica were part of a vigilante club.

(They were. They definitely were.)

Then the jury took their places, jittery with excitement. In Marci’s experience, most jury members took their duty seriously, and these were no exception. Screening jury members for those with a neutral opinion of Daredevil had been… _difficult_ , to say the least, and both Marci and Tower had been able to keep two or three members of the jury with strong opinions for their respective sides. But the jury was made up mostly of women, which pleased Marci. Daredevil protected both men and women, but he usually only protected them _from_ men.

And then, finally, the courtroom rose collectively as Judge Lauria made her entrance. She was probably in her sixties, had been serving as a judge for about twenty years, and had shockingly dark hair against her pale skin. She looked like an older Jessica Jones, and her attitude was about the same.

“Be seated,” she ordered.

Marci sat. Her heart was pounding like it was her first trial again. Or maybe it just felt like that because she was sitting next to someone who could hear it.

“Who’s present?” Lauria asked.

Tower stood up. “Blake Tower for the State, Your Honor.”

Marci stood up as well, with Matt following her lead. “Marci Stahl-Nelson for the defense, Your Honor, with my co-counsel Matthew Murdock, representing himself.”

“Thank you. You can sit down.” Then Lauria turned towards the jury. “Members of the jury, this is a very important case, and I need to over a few rules in addition to the instructions you’ll receive prior to your deliberations. First, aside from other jury members, you may not communicate with anyone about this case. This includes any electronic communication such as emailing, texting, or blogging about the case. In addition, you may not conduct any independent investigation before or during deliberations.

“As you should know,” she went on, “this case involves a controversial figure. There will certainly be reports via internet, newspaper, radio, or television concerning the case while the trial is ongoing.” Her voice hardened. “However, due process of law requires that the evidence you consider in reaching your verdict meets certain standards. For example, all witnesses must be sworn to tell the truth and must be subject to cross-examination. News reports are not subject to either of these standards, and if you read, listen to, or watch these reports, you may be exposed to misleading or inaccurate information that unduly favors one side of the case, and to which the other side is unable to respond. Furthermore, the media, by the nature of their business, has to edit, which can cause distortions. But _you_ are watching the trial unfold for yourselves. _Do not_ allow yourself to be influenced by anyone in the media.”

She leaned forward, narrowing her eyes as if to intimidate the jury into following her orders. “If there should be such media coverage in this case, and if any publicity about this trial inadvertently comes to your attention during trial, do not discuss it with other jurors or anyone else. Talk to me or my clerk as soon possible after it happens, and I will then briefly discuss it with you.”

The jury as a whole looked like they’d rather die than meet privately with Lauria, and Marci couldn’t blame them.

Lauria sat back, apparently satisfied, and turned to address the two tables. “Counselors, I expect you to ask for permission before entering the well when examining the other side’s witness. Do not approach the other side’s witness without asking permission. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” the three attorneys said in unison—the first and only time they’d be in sync.

“Good. And with that, I expect the prosecution has an opening statement?”

Tower stood up. “Yes, Your Honor.” He straightened his suit and hesitated. “May I approach?”

Lauria waved him on.

Stepping confidently into the well, Tower stood still for a moment, waiting for the eyes of each member of the jury to settle on him, and then waiting a moment longer.

Finally, he began. “Members of the Jury,” he said, voice low and smooth. “We live in Hell’s Kitchen. We remember the Incident—aliens, actual _aliens_ , pouring from the sky, superheroes trying desperately to stop it. Whatever you think of the legality of their actions, no one can deny that we owe our lives to the heroics of the Avengers.”

He inclined his head slightly. “Now, some would argue that vigilantes are the same. But vigilantes are not heroes. It is the difference between shooting an extraterrestrial creature invading our planet with intent to kill…and shooting another human being. Members of the jury, it’s one thing to unleash violence not sanctioned by the law against inhuman warriors from outer space. It’s another to unleash violence outside the law against fellow citizens. The defense will try to convince you today that _Daredevil_ is like Captain America or Iron Man. He’s not.

“ _Daredevil_ —” He spat the name, “—is a man like Frank Castle, who shot up a hospital, who left his victims skewered on meat hooks. Daredevil is a vigilante like Trish Walker, who beat a man to death in an elevator when the law wasn’t working the way she wanted. And maybe some of us cheer if the person they’re attacking hurt us or someone we know. But what happens when someone innocent is at the wrong place at the wrong time and gets caught in the crossfire? What happens if an innocent is framed? What happens if one of these vigilantes just _dislikes_ someone, and labels them a criminal after the fact?” Tower paused. “I mean…who’s to know the difference?”

He walked across the courtroom. “Members of the jury, just moments ago, the Honorable Judge Lauria explained to you the importance of only considering evidence that comes through this courtroom. That’s because this courtroom, like those across the United States, is built on standards to protect the innocent from being judged based on gossip, slander, lies, and misinformation. That’s because we value the life and freedom of every citizen of Hell’s Kitchen. But these vigilantes? They make it their _mission_ to deprive other citizens of life and liberty not according to any common standards of justice but according to a warped and fractured justice of their own.”

Tower paused, giving the jury a chance to digest this, before pointing at Matt. “The defendant—” His voice rang out, “—is facing numerous charges related to vigilantism. Multiple counts of assault, of menacing the officers of the NYPD, and of strangulation. Daredevil operates in the dark, from the shadows. But over the course of this trial, I will prove that these violent acts were intentional and, ultimately, unnecessary.

“You will hear today from several witnesses who will demonstrate that the defendant is responsible for these acts. First, you’ll hear from a man who’s clashed with the vigilante Daredevil time after time over only three years. They’ve spoken face-to-face and fought toe-to-toe. It’s a man we’re all glad to see behind bars, but it’s also a man that our excellent law enforcement was capable of containing. It’s a man who is _not_ above the law, and can only be taken down _through_ the law.” A pause, letting suspense build, letting the jury wonder who Tower could be referring to. “That man…is Wilson Fisk.”

Cue hushed gasps.

“Daredevil’s attempts to stop this man on his own only interfered with the NYPD trying to do their jobs—and by extension, interfered with the safety of this city. At least, that’s what you’ll hear from another witness, Detective Sergeant Brett Mahoney: the man responsible for securing the arrests of men like Wilson Fisk and Frank Castle. Detective Mahoney is as familiar with the vigilante as any fox could be with a hound. Mahoney’s testimony will detail the numerous crimes carried out by the vigilante, and will also show how allowing Daredevil to run unchecked through the streets invites other criminals to do the same.”

The fox and the hound? Really? Didn’t he know that was a tear-jerker?

“And you’ll hear from Dr. Rowe, a physician at Metro who receives Daredevil’s victims.” Tower started pacing, speaking just a bit faster, building momentum. “You’ll see that the damage doled out by Daredevil is extreme. Even when the criminals attempt heinous crimes, Daredevil doesn’t stop once they’ve been incapacitated. For most criminals, a broken arm is enough to bring them to their knees. But Daredevil uses excessive force because he’s not interested in protecting others—he’s interested in inflicting pain. Dr. Rowe will show you the medical records of individuals who have been broken into pieces, beaten into unconsciousness, and even killed…because of Daredevil.”

He slowed down. Caught his breath. Lowered his voice. “And, finally, you’ll hear from a reporter who has investigated Daredevil, publishing numerous articles detailing his activities. But it’s not the articles that matter for this trial. No, it’s her relationship to the vigilante himself. The reporter, members of the jury, was once Karen Page—now Karen Murdock. That’s right. She’s married to the defendant, yet she has agreed to testify as to Daredevil’s identity. You will see for yourself the batons she provided us, and you will hear Mrs. Murdock admit, under oath, that the defendant is Daredevil.”

The eyes of the jury shot towards the seats behind the defense table, either recognizing Karen or trying to recognize her.

Tower let them look until their curiosity ebbed. Then he stepped slightly forward, regaining their attention. “Members of the jury, vigilantes act like they are a law unto themselves. We live in Hell’s Kitchen—we’re all familiar with the disaster that follows in the wake of vigilantes. And now, at last, we have the chance to administer justice on behalf of each and every citizen of Hell’s Kitchen who has been affected by Daredevil. Members of the jury, justice is in your hands. Consider the testimony. Consider the stakes. And, at the end of this trial, I ask that you find the defendant guilty. Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, Tower would totally have a co-counsel, but I don't wanna introduce a last-minute character who'd be so involved in all the trial stuff, so...idk, assume that Tower has lots of interns helping him or wants all the glory or something. Pay no attention to the fact that I probably should've thought about inventing a co-counsel for him like ten chapters ago. Whoops.
> 
> And just for the record: Matt's representing himself in addition to having Marci represent him, which means he can question witnesses and everything too, because that's way more fun.
> 
> (I'm so sorry, but the chapter count spiked. And will most likely spike again.)


	30. Let Your Voice Scream Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "King of Silence" by We Came as Romans (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KCWf6lwbvc).

Marci

They were as ready as they were going to get. About a week prior, she’d been brainstorming with Matt over how to spin proportionality in his favor. “What we really need,” she’d said, “is someone you’ve beaten up, but not too much. Got any friends like that?”

She’d said it sarcastically, not expecting anything, but he’d done a thoughtful little head tilt. “Actually…”

“What, you _do?_ ”

And then he’d told her about Melvin Potter.

It was a sticky situation. Melvin would go back into custody so he could testify for Matt because Matt had gotten Betsy out of trouble, because the sooner Matt was out of prison the sooner he could go back to protecting Betsy, and because Marci pulled strings to get some ex-colleagues to represent Melvin. But Tower could make Melvin look incredibly biased by pointing to all the exchanges of favors. Still, the very fact that they were friendly (ish) made Matt seem less like a crazed vigilante and more like a guy just trying to help people.

And that gave Marci two witnesses to set against Tower’s four. (Or…against Tower’s three and a half, since no one even pretended to expect Karen to go along with Tower except on the issue of Matt’s identity.)

“Is the defense ready to give their opening statement?” Judge Lauria asked.

Marci leaned towards Matt with a whisper: “Last chance to abandon our strategy and just make it up as we go along. Isn’t that what you normally do?”

“It’s definitely not our last chance to do that,” he whispered back.

“Wish me luck, then.” She stood up and lifted her voice. “Yes, Your Honor. Thank you.”

It was true that they could change tactics at any point—rewrite questions, even amend the witness list. But her opening statement was supposed to outline what the jury could expect her to prove. Drastic changes would make the jury think she’d failed to deliver on her promises.

She stepped into the well of the courtroom, one hand at her side and one elbow bent, one foot marginally ahead of the other, head cocked slightly to one side. All eyes on her. Traditional wisdom claimed that eighty to ninety percent of jurors made up their minds shortly after opening statements. It was from an old study that hadn’t been thoroughly retested, but it made sense. The opening statements set the tone for the rest of the trial.

So it would be naïve of Marci to _not_ be nervous. But no one would know it to look at her.

Finally, she began to speak. “If you see something,” she said, “say something.” She could already tell she’d captured the jury’s attention, just by the incongruity of pairing such a slogan with a blind defendant. She smiled internally. “After the attack on September eleventh, that catchphrase became our nation’s slogan in response to a threat unlike any we’d faced before. We’re all New Yorkers; we remember what that attack was like, how it changed us forever. But the slogan doesn’t only apply to international threats. It’s been used in the wake of domestic terrorism and shootings, it’s been used by lobbyists to inspire constituents to raise their voices, and it even pops up in employee handbooks charging employees to report signs of harassment.” That was where most of the members of the jury were likely to have encountered it, and she caught one or two nods.

“If you see something,” she repeated, “say something. But sometimes just _saying_ isn’t enough. Sometimes you have to _do_ something. Especially if there’s no time to ask anyone else for help. Especially if another life is on the line.”

She walked back to her desk, then stepped around Matt’s chair to put her hands on his shoulders. “Members of the jury, I want you to meet Matthew Murdock, an attorney born and raised right here in Hell’s Kitchen. You may know him as the lawyer who accepts payment in pastries. You probably also know him as one half of the legal team that took down Wilson Fisk—twice. He’s a man who’s devoted himself to the good of others, often finding his clients jobs, homes, counseling, or whatever else they need—no matter the cost to himself.”

And, aww, the tips of Matt’s ears flushed slightly with embarrassment. Foggy would call him a handsome duck. Marci was above such things.

She returned to the center of the courtroom. “But what Mr. Murdock does as a defense attorney isn’t just helping people get the things they need. A defense attorney by trade is there to protect. And that’s exactly what Mr. Murdock does in courtrooms just like this one, day after day. You will see that whenever he encounters injustice, he doesn’t just say something—he _does_ something.”

He did too much, and Tower would have no problem flipping her theme to point it out, but that was a problem to deal with later.

“During this trial,” she continued, “you’ll hear from several witnesses. Detective Brett Mahoney will tell you how, without Daredevil’s quick intervention, more lives in this city would be lost every day waiting for the police to arrive. Karen Murdock will tell you how, were it not for Daredevil’s help, she would have been one of those lives lost. And Melvin Potter, a man who’s strayed beyond the limits of the law more than once, will tell you what it’s actually like to find yourself on the other side of Daredevil’s fists. He will tell you that Daredevil will fight until the bad guy is incapacitated, but go no further.”

Not a lie, since it was Melvin Potter saying it, and that was what Melvin Potter actually believed. She knew; she’d checked. And rechecked.

“And you’ll hear from Mr. Murdock himself, who will explain to you what the world is like from his perspective.” She let herself smile softly. “Matthew Murdock is blind. He lost his sight when he was just nine years old. How? By _protecting_ someone else, an older gentleman standing in the way of an oncoming truck bearing toxic chemicals. When Matthew pushed the would-be victim out of the way, the truck hit him instead, and took his sight.”

And now for the tricky part. She lifted her chin, refusing to reveal the slightest hint of nervousness. “But, unexpectedly, those toxic chemicals gave him something else. They enhanced his remaining senses. You will hear from Mr. Murdock himself what it’s like to live every day with a sense of hearing, smell, test, and touch beyond what the rest of us are used to. In many ways, these senses are a curse.” She smiled again, shaking her head a little. “I mean, imagine an enhanced sense of smell in New York.”

A surprised laugh from one member of the jury. The rest seemed…shocked? Confused? Suspending judgment?

She swept on. “Mr. Murdock can’t see, no. He can’t see anything at all. But you will learn that he can hear plenty. He can hear the sirens each night when the police arrive to a scene too late to help. And he can hear the screams that come before the sirens.” She lowered her voice. “And when he hears those screams, he defends those who need help.”

Then she stepped briskly to the side, signaling a shift in focus. “Now, you’ll hear more about the details of the law at the end of this trial. But for now, I’d like to direct your attention to two pages in your jury instructions. First, at the beginning of the first page, your jury instructions explain the presumption of innocence and outline the burden of proof. A presumption of innocence means that although my client has been _accused_ of certain crimes, an accusation is not evidence of guilt. The prosecution has to start from scratch to prove _each_ element of _each_ count beyond a reasonable doubt. This is the burden of proof, the heaviest possible burden of proof chosen because to unjustly sentence an innocent man goes against our core values.  As you will see, the prosecution will fail to meet this burden.

“I also ask that you take a look at the ninth page of your instructions, where you’ll find an overview of an affirmative defense: the defense of others. Members of the jury, the evidence in this case will show that any actions my client has taken are justified because they were done to protect other people. As this trial progresses, I’d like you to keep track of the evidence that shows that my client’s actions were taken—” She raised one finger, “—out of _necessity_ —” She raised another, “in response to an _imminent_ threat—” She raised a third, “—and in _proportion_ to that threat. And I’ll remind you that although my client is raising this defense, the burden rests with the prosecution to _disprove_ those three elements. Throughout this trial, remember that the defense is under no burden whatsoever.”

She took a deep breath. “The prosecution is arguing that this is a case about a lone man wreaking havoc in this city by taking the law into his own hands. But that’s not what this case is about. This case is about one man who, when he hears people in danger, when he hears the _screams_ , decides to do something. To _defend_. That’s not a vigilante, that’s a hero. And heroes are exactly what this city needs. And so, at the end of this trial, I’m going to ask that you find Matthew Murdock innocent of all charges. Thank you.”

 

Matt

As soon as Marci started talking about his senses, each member of the jury’s heart started beating just a little faster. He rubbed his thumb over the material of his pants under the table, keeping calm. Feeling like a specimen under a microscope was not, he decided, _quite_ as bad as feeling like a glass artifact. But it was a close contest.

But Marci didn’t linger over his senses. She swept on to apply them to their affirmative defense, then neatly wrapped everything up and returned to the table. He tried to covertly offer her a fist bump, which she did not return. Maybe she didn’t _do_ fist bumps?

“You did great,” he whispered instead

She sniffed. “I know. Foggy would’ve been better.”

That was, actually, probably true. Foggy had a gift with openings—the jury fell in love with him as soon as he opened his mouth. Half the time the  _judges_  fell in love with him, too, if they hadn’t already. He lowered his voice as Lauria gave the jury a few more instructions. “Have you, uh…have you seen him, recently?”

“No change,” she said emotionlessly.

Matt opened his mouth, but he couldn’t think of a single thing to say that wouldn’t just be some meaningless platitude. He closed it again.

A flurry of motion interrupted her thoughts. Finished with her instructions, Lauria had called a brief recess. The reason was obvious: she had to make sure the courtroom—the entire _courthouse—_ was ready.

Because Tower’s first witness was Wilson Fisk.

Matt and Marci waited at the table as the spectators spilled out, going off in search of bathrooms and vending machines, until the courtroom quieted. But Matt couldn’t stop listening to all the viewers chattering about what they’d heard.

“Is that senses stuff really true?”

“How else could a blind guy be Daredevil?”

“Can he turn it _off?_ ”

“Does that mean he can, like, hear us now?”

“I dunno, I’ve always gotten a creepy vibe from him.”

A loud sound by his ear made him jump, but it was just Marci snapping her fingers to get his attention. “Are you listening to the jury?” she demanded.

He tilted his head. If Lauria was smart, she’d figure out some way to soundproof the jury room. “They're not talking.” He firmly changed the subject. “Any last-minute advice?”

They’d argued for over an hour about which of them should cross Fisk. They’d previously agreed that Marci should do most of the examinations, since Matt getting witnesses to talk about him would come off as tacky at best. But Matt wasn’t interested in what Fisk had to say about _him_.

“I need to point out his bias towards Karen,” he’d insisted. She wasn’t charged for murder, but the media is still reeling from the stories Fisk released.”

“You wanna restore her honor, fine. Save it for when you’re not on trial.”

“But when will I have as big an audience as I do right now?”

She’d folded her arms across her chest.

“Marci.” His voice had dropped, low and earnest. “Foggy would do the same for you.”

“I know,” she’d growled. “All right. Fine. What’s your plan?”

His plan was to show Fisk’s vendetta against her, coupled with Fisk’s history of lying to authorities, to ultimately suggest that he was also lying when he claimed she’d killed Vanessa.

“If you open that door,” Marci had warned, “you won’t be able to control what he says.”

“I know,” Matt had said simply. “But this is a courtroom. My territory.” He just had to keep control of the pacing, keep the jury’s attention on Fisk, and make him look like such a lying liar that the jury automatically disbelieved everything that came out of his mouth.

She’d agreed, finally—on one condition: “Make him pay.”

Now Matt sat beside her at the table, listening to the spectators milling around outside and the jury members waiting in their room while extra bailiffs trooped into the courtroom, ready in case Wilson Fisk tried something. Then he stiffened as he caught the all-too-familiar sound of a slow, heavy heartbeat. “He’s here. Fisk.”

Marci held herself tighter. “Is it terrible of me to say I wish you’d killed him when you had the chance? Don’t answer that.”

He opened his mouth again, only to close it. The doors at the back of the courtroom opened, allowing the spectators to file back in and take their places. He focused on Karen’s heartbeat, and the quicker, smaller heartbeat accompanying her, but even those sweet sounds couldn’t drown out his sense of Fisk’s presence. The jury returned next, and then Fisk entered.

Every heartrate in the room jumped. Marci picked up a pen, which creaked under the pressure of her grip.

Fisk folded his frame into one of the chairs behind Tower’s table, only to stand with the rest of the room as the bailiff instructed them to rise for the judge. Lauria took her seat, and Matt wished he could see her expression. Was she angry that Fisk was in her courtroom? Disgusted? Excited?

He didn’t know, but he could tell from her breathing that she wasn’t exactly apathetic.

“Is the State ready to call its first witness?” she asked.

Tower rose from behind his table. Matt was gratified to catch the scent of his sweat. He was nervous. Or, at least, feeling the weight of the trial’s significance. “Yes, Your Honor. The prosecution calls Wilson Fisk to the stand.”

The jury stirred. No one would be falling asleep during this examination.

Matt felt the vibration of Fisk’s footsteps through his chair as Fisk made his way to the stand, and his voice echoed through Matt’s bones as he swore to tell the truth. Matt didn’t need to hear his heartbeat to know he was lying; he knew _him_.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Fisk.” Tower stood in the middle of the courtroom, voice icy but polite. The picture of pure professionalism. “Please state your name and spell your last name for the record.”

Fisk settled back in the chair as he did so. Relaxed. He might be a criminal, but he wasn’t on trial today.

Tower skipped most of the foundational questions, perhaps assuming the jury was familiar with Fisk or perhaps wanting to avoid stirring Fisk’s wrath by embarrassing him with questions about his criminal history. Fisk might be willing to expose himself to bring down Karen, but there was a reason Tower was trying to get back at Fisk through Matt and Marci, rather than punishing Fisk himself. “Mr. Fisk, do you know the defendant?”

“Yes. He’s a lawyer and a vigilante.”

“Can you identify the defendant by an article of clothing?”

Fisk gestured. “There, at the defense table, in the green tie.”

(Foggy had labeled it “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Green” but Karen had assured him it was a bit more tastefully muted.)

“Let the record reflect that the witness has correctly identified the defendant,” Tower narrated. “And why are you testifying today, Mr. Fisk?”

“I’m testifying today because Karen Murdock killed my wife.”

“Objection!” Matt shouted, jumping to his feet.

“Overruled,” Judge Lauria said swiftly, before he could get a word out to justify the objection. “I’d like to hear where this is going.”

Matt sank back into his seat, trying to concentrate past the sudden rushing in his ears. Behind him, Karen was frozen in her seat, her breathing thin and shallow.

“What does your wife’s murder have to do with your testimony today? Tower asked.

Fisk exhaled heavily. “She was killed because the Murdocks operate outside of the law to oppose the people they deem criminal.”

“Such as yourself?” Tower asked mildly.

“I do not deny that I am a criminal,” Fisk admitted. “But the NYPD and the FBI are those entrusted with thwarting me. Not a man in a devil suit.”

Tower paused for a moment. “When did you first encounter Mr. Murdock?”

“We spoke over a radio. It was night of the bombings that destroyed half of this city.

“What did the two of you talk about?”

Matt tensed. The conversation was hearsay, but he could think of too many potential exceptions, at least for Matt’s words, since Matt was the defendant. He didn’t need to be overruled again or else the jury would lose confidence in him.

“He told me he was going to stop me. He told me that if I killed him, he would incite other vigilantes to rise up and take his place until this city is overrun.”

“How do you know that the man you spoke with is the defendant?”

“At the time, I only knew that he was the man in the mask. The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.”

“Are you aware of anyone else who was with the defendant when you spoke?”

“Yes.” Fisk’s voice rose slightly. “Two hostages.”

“Who were the hostages?”

“One was a Russian criminal. Perhaps Mr. Murdock intended to kill him once he got the—”

“Objection, Your Honor,” Matt interrupted, standing up again, gesturing frustratedly. “This is blatant speculation.”

“Sustained,” Lauria agreed testily. She had little patience for witnesses speculation, Matt remembered. “Mr. Fisk, please confine your testimony to your personal knowledge.”

“One was a Russian criminal,” Fisk repeated. “One was a police officer.”

“Were you working with either of these individuals?”

“No. I’d had an alliance with the Russian at one point, but I found his methods distasteful. I had no relationship with the officer.”

“But both were held hostage?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you.” Tower settled one hand on his hip. “When was the next time you interacted?”

“It was with Mr. Murdock as a civilian. As the lawyer, not the vigilante. He arrived at my wife’s art gallery.” Anger tightened his voice. “When I arrived, he was speaking with my wife.”

“And what happened?”

“I didn’t realize that he was the man in the mask. I only thought he was a lawyer. One that I once hired to defend an assassin I’d previously contracted.”

Matt clenched his fist under the table, but Tower kept going before he could come up with an objection.

“Was Mr. Murdock still working for you at this point?”

“He and his partner, Mr. Nelson, were still on retainer, yes. But I hadn’t required their services after the assassin’s case.”

“What happened at the gallery?”

“We spoke very briefly about a tenancy case before he left. The next time that I saw him, he was wearing the mask.”

“Can you tell the court more about that?”

Fisk waited a moment before responding, as if organizing his thoughts. “It was at a warehouse. I’d left a trail so he would find me there. I admit that I baited the hook with the death of Elena Cardenas. I am not proud of that decision. But the strategy was effective.” His voice rose slightly. “I do not enjoy inflicting pain, but Daredevil consistently eluded the brave officers of the NYPD. The law was failing. I simply followed Murdock’s example.”

“What was your goal in bringing the defendant to that warehouse?”

“A colleague of mine was waiting for him. This colleague was exceptionally skilled at hand-to-hand combat and I was hopeful that he could defeat the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.”

“Did he?”

“No.” Fisk’s voice rose. “By the time I arrived, my colleague was burning to death.”

“Burning?” Tower repeated, sounding shocked. He wasn’t shocked, he’d heard all this in the deposition. But he was playing it up for the jury, who definitely seemed shocked.

“I don’t know how he caught fire, but I know that Murdock escaped unscathed.”

 _Unscathed?_ No one who’d seen Matt’s scars could believe that. Unfortunately, he couldn’t exactly strip off his shirt and jacket.

“Did you speak with the defendant at that time?”

“Yes. He threatened to kill me, though he failed and later escaped by leaping out of a window.”

“When did you next speak with the defendant?”

“There wasn’t much talking,” Fisk said gruffly. “He interrupted my wedding, and then tried to kill my wife and I. Again, he failed.”

“To clarify, how many times has Daredevil tried to kill your wife?”

“Once.”

He hadn’t. He _hadn’t_.

“And how many times has Daredevil tried to kill you?”

“Twice.”

“Thank you,” Tower murmured. “No further questions.”

“Does the defense have a cross-examination?” Lauria asked.

Matt straightened his tie as he stood up. “Yes, Your Honor. May I approach?” With her permission, he unsnapped his cane and made his way to the well of the courtroom. Fisk’s heartrate increased slightly, and Matt could smell a hint of sweat.

That was gratifying.

This was the man responsible for the deaths of so many people Matt cared about. He was the reason for all the locks Karen got for the apartment. And he was the reason Foggy was in the hospital instead of sitting next to Marci at the defense table.

Matt inhaled slowly, felt the devil stir deep in his chest, and dove straight into things with his voice even and his pace crisp. “As you stated previously, Mr. Fisk, you and I have never exactly been friendly.”

Fisk waited, as if weighing his answer. “No,” he said at last.

“We opposed one another in a tenancy case, didn’t we?”

“Yes.”

“And, of course, my partner and I represented Detective Carl Hoffman when he testified against you, testimony that resulted in your indictment.”

“Of course. We’re all aware.”

“Similarly, my partner and I represented Special Agent Ray Nadeem, who testified against you a second time before you ordered his death.”

Fisk hesitated. Tower didn’t object.

Matt clenched his fist around his cane. “Answer the question, Mr. Fisk.”

“I didn’t order his death.”

“That’s right,” Matt said swiftly. “ _Vanessa_ ordered his death, didn’t she?”

Fisk’s head snapped up, his heart began to race, his face filled with heat. His voice, screaming, echoed in Matt’s ears.

_Say her name again!_

The question also called for hearsay. Matt could argue about exceptions, but Tower still remained seated. Matt fought to keep his lips from curling into a vicious smile.

Fisk seemed to realize he was on his own and Matt felt a flash of unbidden concern over what might happen to Tower because of this. “My mistake,” Fisk said at last, a furious undercurrent to his voice. “I did order Nadeem’s death.”

“Sorry, is it your testimony today that _you_ ordered Nadeem’s death?”

“Yes.”

“Even though a second ago, you testified that Vanessa ordered Nadeem’s death?”

“I misspoke,” he said through gritted teeth.

Good enough. “So, given that I represented Detective Hoffman as well as Special Agent Nadeem, you’d like nothing more than to ruin my reputation.”

Fisk didn’t answer immediately. “I’m not interested in petty rivalries, Mr. Murdock.”

“Petty rivalries,” Matt repeated quietly. He stood still in the middle of the courtroom. “Mr. Fisk, I’d like to ask you a few more questions about Vanessa. I—”

Before Fisk could respond, Lauria cut in. “Mr. Murdock, since Mr. Tower seems uninterested in objecting to your handling of this witness, let me ask why this is relevant. Vanessa Fisk is not on trial.”

“Credibility,” Matt said immediately. Normally, arguing with a judge was a bad call, but Lauria already hated him and he wanted the jury to hear this. He turned towards Lauria, daring her to fight him on this. “A witness’ credibility is always relevant and I’m about to prove that Mr. Fisk is a liar.”

Wood creaked as Lauria shifted her weight. “I’ll give you some leash, Mr. Murdock,” she said at last—reluctantly. “Don’t make me regret it.”

Matt nodded calmly and mentally cut two questions from what he’d prepared. He needed to get Fisk riled up as quickly as possible. He turned back towards Fisk, leaning forward on his cane, chin high. “I visited you in Ryker’s prison, though I notice you didn’t mention that during your direct examination.”

“Is that a question?”

Matt bared his teeth in a grin. “It is.” Let Fisk lie, let Fisk deny it. Matt would get records of his visit from the prison, or subpoena Donovan or the guards.  He’d dig up a copy of that stupid list of rules in braille and throw it in front of the jury.

“Then yes,” Fisk said. “You visited.”

Fine. Matt got straight to the point. “During that conversation, I threatened to expose Vanessa’s criminal connections. Do you remember?”

“No. I don’t.”

“You don’t remember that I threatened to make sure Vanessa never set foot on American soil?”

“The witness just testified he doesn’t remember,” Lauria cut in.

No problem. The jury heard Matt’s version of the story, and that was just the setup anyway. “Now, Mr. Fisk, the hatred you feel for me pales in comparison to the hatred you feel for my wife, isn’t that right?”

Fisk was silent, like he didn’t know how to answer.

“Isn’t that right?” Matt snapped.

“I don’t approve of either of your methods,” Fisk said at last.

Matt latched onto that. “I’d like to talk about Karen’s methods. First, isn’t it true that you manipulated Union Allied, a corrupt construction company, to further your criminal empire?”

Fisk couldn’t deny it, not when it came out during his first trial. “You know I did.”

“And Karen exposed that corruption.”

“She did.”

“And then, of course, she went to work for my law firm, which was responsible for uncovering the evidence that led to your arrest.”

“Yes.”

“So she’s gotten in your way for a long time.”

“I suppose,” Fisk growled, blood pressure rising.

“ _And_ she continued to oppose you throughout every step of your rise to power and your subsequent fall from grace.”

“Your Honor,” Tower cut in, a token protest lest he look too apathetic.

“Get to the point, Mr. Murdock,” Lauria instructed.

Matt wet his lips. He couldn’t get into Fisk’s criminal convictions, because Fisk’s conviction wasn’t for a crime of dishonesty, and rule 609 only allowed criminal convictions into court if they showed a witness’ propensity to lie. But he _could_ talk about Fisk’s behavior, stopping short of his conviction, and run with as long as Tower didn’t raise a 404 objection. “You tried to have my wife killed three different times.”

Fisk’s heart thumped louder. “Individuals from my organization tried to kill her. It wasn’t personal.”

“You tried to have her _murdered_ in her _cell!_ ” And the evidence for it, from Fisk’s first trial, was ready at the defense table if Fisk denied it.

There was a slick sound as Fisk’s lips pulled back from his teeth. “My enterprise resulted in several deaths in any given week. The nature of my business. None of them were personal.”

“You sent an assassin to her _home_.”

“The nature of my business,” he reiterated.

“No one else escaped you twice.”

Fisk hesitated. “Perhaps.”

“That makes Karen special.”

“She’s not special.”

But she definitely sounded special. And now for the dangerous part. “Vanessa lost her life recently, didn’t she?”

“Your wife _killed_ her!”

“So you say,” Matt said swiftly, “but you made similar false accusations against me at one point, didn’t you?”

“What?”

“Mr. Fisk, you told the FBI that I knowingly worked for you.”

The chair groaned to support Fisk’s weight as he shifted his bulk. “You represented one of my assassins.”

Matt didn’t smile, didn’t want Fisk to see the trap he was laying for him. “My firm was retained by a company called CGI, not by you.”

“I operated through CGI,” Fisk retorted.

Now Matt smiled. “Was CGI publicly associated with you?”

Fisk unfolded and refolded his hands. “No.”

“Right, CGI was actually a front, which means the FBI found no evidence to corroborate your claims that I _knowingly_ worked for you.”

Fisk gritted his teeth. “You’d have to ask them.”

Matt raised his voice. “When you told the FBI that I had a history of knowingly working for you, was that a lie—yes or no?”

“Yes,” Fisk spit out.

“Just like you lied about who killed your wife.”

“Karen Murdock killed Vanessa!” Fisk shouted, the words ringing through the courtroom.

Matt pretended he hadn’t heard, raising his voice in return. “Just like you lied about who ordered the death of Agent Nadeem!”

“I misspoke!”

“You _lied!_ ”

“ _I misspoke!_ ”

Matt whirled around. “I’m done with this witness,” he spat as his own heart pounded in his ears as loud and as fast as Fisk’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Not important, but I feel compelled to say that I am Not Good at opening statements and my mock trial coach is making me give one in front of real-live-actual-lawyers and it's terrifying but my brother is visiting and he's sooooo good at openings (he's not even in law school, he's just Soft and people listen to him) and he's pointing out where I should add "the evidence will show" so I don't sound argumentative and just ughhhh shoutout to my brother and please don't take these opening statements too seriously because I CANNOT.)
> 
> In general, Matt probably would not push the whole "You lied" thing so much on cross; it's better to stress that in a closing argument (since witnesses aren't usually eager to agree when you tell them they're a liar). But he wants to nail the point home before the jury gets distracted thinking about defense-of-others and all the other witnesses. And I want him to yell at Fisk.


	31. You Shouldn't Test Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Hand Grenades" by Write This Down (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5g17mnt7rA).

Matt

It’d been a long time since he’d done this, but he could run this route in his sleep. Swinging up onto her fire escape, he was disgruntled to find the window already cracked. Easier for him, but not safe for her. She was on the couch accompanied by the hum of a laptop, and she didn’t notice him as he slid open the window, only looking up when he rolled through to land lightly in her apartment.

Now she screamed, snatching up a thing that he thought was probably a baseball bat.

“It’s just me!” he said quickly.

Swearing under her breath, she stalked across the room to jerk the window open. “How bad?”

He climbed swiftly through so she could shut the window before all the cooler air escaped into the summer night. “I’m not injured, I just—”

“ _Not injured?_ Why are you crawling through my window at two in the morning if you’re not injured?”

“All the memories?” Pulling off his mask, he ran his hand self-consciously through his hair. “Is it two in the morning?”

“They’re not particularly _good_ memories,” she grumbled, padding past him in bare feet into the kitchen. “You want tea?”

“Got any beer?”

“Tea. It’s two in the morning.” She was already filling up two mugs for them. She used an actual kettle, not a microwave, bless her. “Why didn’t you call?”

“I deleted your number from my burner. I don’t want anyone to find you if they get ahold of it. Why are you leaving your window unlocked?”

“Stop being so paranoidly sweet, it’s confusing.” Returning to his side, she prodded him down onto the couch and plopped onto the cushion next to him, handing him his mug. “So how are you doing with all this?”

The warm ceramic burned his hands. “You really expect me to know how to answer that?”

He heard laughter in her voice as she said, “All right, good point. How’s…how’s everyone else?”

Her question was posed too carefully to be casual. Feigning ignorance, he took it literally. “Well, you know, Karen and Marci have been figuring out the best way to use all the questions Tower asks her to bolster our case instead, so I’d say they’re having fun. I don’t think they’re friends or anything yet, but they both have this kind of scary energy and now they’re feeding off each other.”

Claire made a vague noise of assent.

“And, uh, Foggy is…” Better to skip over Foggy. “Ella wants to testify too, which would _definitely_ play on the jury’s sympathies. I just don’t know what Tower would come up with on cross. Although he’s got to know how terrible it’ll look if he goes after her too hard.”

Claire just nodded.

“And, oh, Jessica’s here. She’s watching over my mom and I think they’re, you know…bonding. Or something.”

“Good for them.”

He stifled a smirk. “So, that’s pretty much everybody.”

“Matt.”

“Was there someone else you wanted to know about?”

She sighed heavily.

“I mean, Frank Castle is back, but I’m trying not to think about that, to be honest. Other than that…”

“I will dump my tea on your stupid mask and it will smell like jasmine and honey for weeks.”

Like that was a bad thing. “What?” he asked innocently.

Huffing, she curled her legs closer into herself. “I’ll just ask him myself.”

“You guys are, what…talking?”

“I gave him my number when he brought back my car.” Matt must’ve been doing a terrible job concealing his smirk, because her voice sharpened. “For the next time he finds you bleeding out and needs me to save your life.”

“Appreciate it.” He didn’t miss the fact that she’d neatly dodged the question. “He’s been busy, you know. With Poindexter.”

She hummed neutrally.

So she knew about Dex? “I mean, he’s really devoted himself to helping Dex get...better, or something. It’s almost obsessive.”

She snorted loudly.

“ _What?_ ”

She held up her hands defensively. “I just feel like you of all people don’t have the right to call anyone obsessive.”

“Excuse me?”

“Blah, blah, _my city_.” She tucked her hair behind her ears. “Or what about Elektra? Luke told me what happened with her.”

Matt stiffened. “Luke doesn’t know what happened with her.”

“He knows enough. He knows you put other people in danger to protect her secrets because you really believed she could change.”

He clenched his jaw. “And look what happened.”

“Hey.” Scooting closer, Claire laid her hand on his arm. “I’m sorry you couldn’t save her. And I know that trying and failing broke your heart. But I’m glad you tried anyway.” Her hand trailed up his arm to push the hair back from his forehead, a gesture she’d first adopted to check for head wounds but which had at some point morphed into an offer of pure affection. “That’s a mark of a hero, you know? When there’s no such thing as lost causes.”

Accepting compliments was not his strength, but Claire didn’t say things carelessly. He gave a small nod. “Thank you.”

She blew lightly on her tea. “Not that I don’t appreciate hanging out with you, but why exactly did you come, if you’re not injured?”

“Right. Here’s the thing. I’m cross-examining a doctor from Metro General’s ER. And it’s kinda…important.”

“Are you _nervous?_ ” She sounded delighted.

“This is my life we’re talking about here,” he pointed out.

“It’s not that I like seeing you nervous,” she defended herself. “It’s just refreshing to know that you’re _capable_ of nervousness.”

Rolling his eyes, he took a sip from his mug to give his hands something to do. It was too hot and now he wouldn’t be able to taste anything. “You’re right, though. This witness…this is the one that could ruin our case.”

“Even more than Karen?”

Matt cocked his head at her. “How much do you already know?”

“Just whatever Stone’s told me.”

“Well, you’re right that if we were trying to pretend I’m not Daredevil at all, her testimony would be the most devastating. Completely devastating, actually, which is why we’re not doing that. But in order to argue that my being Daredevil is justified despite actually being illegal, we have to prove that I’m only hurting the bad guys enough to get them to stop. Nothing…excessive.”

Claire sipped from her own mug. How was she not burning her tongue? “So you’re screwed.”

“You could’ve _tried_ to sound positive.”

“You know when I’m lying,” she shot back.

“Ha, ha.”

“So you’re here for…what? Who’s the doctor? I might have dirt.”

“I like to think of myself as an ethical person, actually.”

“Which is why you were torturing people when we first met.”

“The trigeminal nerve was your idea,” he retorted.

“After you dropped a _fire extinguisher_ on his head!”

Matt winced. “So you see my problem.”

She laughed grimly. “All right, so this doctor is gonna get up and start talking about how you regularly beat people into a pulp, and you need to make the beating-people-into-a-pulp thing sound reasonable. That’s the goal?”

“That’s the goal.”

She hummed and sipped her tea. “Well, it’s not like the doctor’s an expert on hand-to-hand combat, right?”

“Yeah, and I’m already thinking I’ll point out how few facts the doctor has about the circumstances of the fight. Pointing to gaps in an expert’s knowledge is a good way to make them lose credibility in front of a jury. It’s just…I want as many arguments as possible.” He hesitated. “You’re more familiar with my, uh, methods than most. What would you say, if the prosecution called you? If you hated Daredevil, what would you say?”

Something dark fell over her voice. “I’d say blunt force trauma has a lot of unforeseeable repercussions. Breaking someone’s leg is a good way to stop a fight. It’s efficient. Punching someone’s face in? Not so much. And punching someone’s face could do damage that’ll last years, maybe even a lifetime—long after the fight is over. Not to mention the number of people you’ve put in comas, and sometimes comas…change people.”

He was trying _so hard_ not to think about what that might mean for Foggy. He cleared his throat, but his voice still sounded tight when he said, “So how do I counter that?”

She hummed again. “I don’t know the legal side, but if you need to convince people that you only fight as long and as hard as you have to, you could point out that this doctor has no idea which injuries occur first.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, say a guy’s stalking some girl he knows, and you show up before he can touch her. Say the guy ends up with a broken leg, but you can’t break the leg right away. Because of how the fight’s playing out, I don’t know, it’s just not possible at first. So maybe you punch him in the face three or four times just to keep him away from the girl or keep yourself safe. Say you break the guy’s leg at the very end. That doesn’t seem so excessive.”

“But if I break someone’s leg and then keep punching them, that’s…?”

That was letting the devil out.

“That’s not pretty,” she said simply.

“But you’re saying the doctor can’t tell which injury happened first? Not even by swelling?”

She coughed. “What, and you can?”

He hesitated. “Well, it’s not an exact science.”

“Matt! Why are you not a _doctor?_ ”

“Because I like arguing too much. So they seriously can’t tell the chronological orders of injuries?”

“I mean…” She ran a hand through her hair. “Maybe if it’s spaced apart over several days. If you hit someone with your club once and then hit them again two days later, the bruising will look different. Or if you broke someone’s arm two weeks ago and then break their nose tomorrow, we can tell which injury came first. But it’s impossible to tell the order of a bunch of injuries that all happened within single hour.”

“But can’t a medical examiner tell the timeline of injuries? Why not—”

“That’s for _dead people_ , Matt. Like, you can generally tell if a stab wound happened before or after death based on a pattern of blood loss, which only works because _dead people_ stop bleeding. And dead people don’t bruise easily, so sometimes you can figure out if a hit occurred after death if the blood in a bruise is stagnated.” She took another sip of her tea, a surprisingly domestic action given their conversation. “Or you could just, you know, cut off the bruised skin and use a microscope to figure out how long it’s been healing, but most living patients aren’t cool with that and it’s _definitely_ not standard procedure.”

He frowned. “Huh.”

“Still don’t believe you have superpowers?”

“For the last time, they’re not—”

“You have to at least _pretend_ to call them that if you want Marci’s strategy to work.”

He cocked his head. “How do you know Marci’s strategy?”

“This case is all over the hospital, Matt. It’s literally the only thing anyone’s gossiping about, which is saying something since one of our surgeons just broke up with her nurse.”

“Oh.” That was…unexpected. He shifted his weight uncomfortably. “And…is that a problem for you?”

She shrugged. “I’ve been mostly staying out of it. The staff’s split about thirty-seventy in your favor, so it’s not like I need to defend your honor.”

He grinned. “Really?”

“I could, though,” she said suddenly.

“What?”

“Defend you. If you thought it would help.”

“Why would that—”

“In _court_ , you idiot.” She leaned forward, put her face right in front of his, making him blink reflexively. “That would help, right? If I testified? Since they’ve got their own fancy expert?”

“No,” he said immediately.

“No,” she echoed, disbelief dripping from her voice.

Crap. “Claire, it…I appreciate the offer, really, but you couldn’t—”

“Couldn’t what? I could explain the injuries you inflict just as well as this other guy, but _I_ know the other side.” Her voice turned cold, the way it always did when referencing the Russians. “I know the whole story.”

He couldn’t let her do that. She’d already lost her job once because of him. She’d already been a _target_ because of him. (And Fisk wasn’t the only criminal who hated Daredevil. Anyone who testified publicly in his defense was painting a target on their back.)

“Matt,” she said, stressing the _t_ ’s the way she did when she was particularly impatient with him.

“It won’t help.”

“Yeah, it would. My hands-on experience—”

At least he didn’t have to fake sounding apologetic. “Tower is calling a _physician_ , Claire. I’m not throwing you into an expert battle. The jury will compare your experience and dismiss you, and Tower will tear you apart.” He angled his face away from hers. “Sorry.”

She sat in silence for several long minutes, making him wonder just how badly he’d offended her. Then she sighed. “See, you give that speech to any other nurse and they’d probably believe you. But I was up there on the hospital roof with you when you refused to leave your self-appointed post, and I was…I was just outside Midland Circle when it fell. You’re not protecting your _case_. You’re protecting me.” She scooted closer, putting her hand on his knee before he could wriggle away. “And I don’t want your protection.”

He could still fight. He could pretend to do Tower’s job and rip into her credentials, make her feel like she had nothing to offer. Or he could let her keep believing the truth (it was embarrassing how easily she’d seen through him) while he simply refused, flat-out, to let her help. He could even shift the blame to Marci, make up something about how Marci didn’t want to add witnesses this late in the game.

But he was a father now. He couldn’t keep martyring himself at every opportunity. And if the people in his life had demonstrated one thing, it was that they really did want to be there for him just as much as he wanted to keep them safe.

He swallowed. “You, uh…you really wanna do this?”

She was nodding before the words had left his mouth.

 

Karen

The little bell chimed overhead as Karen opened the door to the café, one of those shops that only sold salads and smoothies. She still wasn’t sure what she was actually doing, but Marci had texted to tell her they had a meeting with two prosecutors. Not Tower. And not at an office. All of which left Karen very uneasy. She couldn’t bring Frank, for obvious reasons, and it felt like she was walking into the lion’s den despite the fact that the little café was actually quite cheery, with yellow-orange painted walls and a mural of smiling vegetables gazing down at her.

To her relief, Marci was already there, sitting at a table in front of a man and a woman in suits with four small water cups between them. No smoothies, no salads. Because Marci wasn’t Matt (and because she appeared to be in the middle of an intense conversation), she didn’t notice Karen’s presence until Karen pulled up the chair beside her.

“I guess this is where I’m supposed to be?” Karen asked as casually as she could, pulling up a chair under an emerald cucumber that had a gap-toothed grin.

“Mrs. Murdock.” The two suits stood up in unison, holding out their hands. “Thank you for making time to meet with us. We were just speaking with your representative.”

Was Marci her representative, or was Matt? Karen had lost track, so she just smiled blandly, shook their hands, and sat down.

After introducing themselves as Gonzalez and Malone, the suits also sat, introducing themselves as two prosecutors who worked in Tower’s office.

“But Tower doesn’t know you’re here,” Marci said sharply.

“Not yet.” Malone’s voice was careful. He had thinning brown hair and pale blue eyes, giving him an almost haggard appearance despite his crisp black suit. “He will, of course, depending on what resolution we reach in this meeting, but in the meantime—”

“Depending how?” Marci interrupted.

Gonzalez narrowed her eyes.

“On whether the salient issue is resolved,” Malone said smoothly.

“Which is?”

Gonzalez folded her hands on the table. “The degree of Mrs. Murdock’s cooperation in furtherance of her plea bargain,” she said, her words stringing together under a light Spanish accent. She faced Karen, apparently ignoring Marci for now. “Mrs. Murdock, we have some questions about your husband.”

Flattening her lips into a thin line, Karen waited.

“You’re aware, we assume, of the charges being brought against him?”

“It’s all bullshit.”

The two suits raised their eyebrows as one. “Do we need to remind you that you already admitted to your knowledge of his activity? Vigilantism is highly illegal.”

“Matt _helps_ people. In fact, he’s doing a better job helping people than you ever—” She broke off as Marci nudged her leg under the table with one spiky black Kate Spade high heel.

The suits exchanged glances before setting their eyes on Karen. “According to your deposition, Mr. Murdock told you that he is Daredevil before you were married, isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” Karen said hesitantly. “And you seem pretty familiar with my deposition, so I don’t really see why you’re asking me any questions.”

“We just need to work through a couple of things.” Gonzalez glanced down at her notepad, then back up at Karen. Her brown eyes were soft and warm and Karen didn’t trust them at all. “You live with Mr. Murdock, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Karen said hesitantly, shooting a look at Marci. Her face was as impassive as always.

“Do you feel safe there when Mr. Murdock is home?”

“Of course I do,” Karen said flatly.

“Have you and Mr. Murdock ever argued about his activities as Daredevil?”

“Don’t answer that,” Marci said.

The suit didn’t even spare her a glance. “Has Mr. Murdock ever made you feel unsafe?”

“I feel safest with him, actually.”

A brief, fake smile. “If that ever changes, you have our card. We also have a number of services we can recommend to you, shelters and counselors.” She paused. “Despite advancements in psychology, we recognize that law enforcement sometimes trails behind. For instance, the impact of domestic violence on women was, for many years, completely discounted. Our department isn’t perfect, but we certainly recognize the effects of—”

“Matt has _never_ abused me,” Karen hissed.

“I’m glad to hear it,” she said calmly. “Just…please bear in mind that, if you were to talk to us more about whatever he has or hasn’t done, we can ask for some special instructions from the judge to make sure the jury understands how your particular situation might affect your—”

“Excuse me, what jury?” Marci interrupted. “Last I checked, Mrs. Murdock isn’t the one on trial.”

Malone leaned forward. “Not yet, no, but that all depends on whether she plays nice with us.”

“Mrs. Murdock’s case was settled when she gave you Daredevil’s identity, or have you forgotten?”

“That’s not the case we’re referring too,” Malone said smoothly.

The temperature in the room seemed to plummet as Marci’s eyes narrowed into slits. “Which case?”

“We’re talking about the murder of Kevin Page, Mrs. Murdock’s brother.”

 

Marci

The what?

Karen immediately went scarily pale. “He died in a car accident.”

“Caused by your reckless indifference to human life,” Malone responded. He turned his head until his watery blue eyes met Marci’s stare. “We’re not just talking about manslaughter, Ms. Stahl. Sure, there may not’ve been intent to kill, but driving at that speed, on those icy Vermont roads?” His eyes flicked back to Karen, who was barely breathing. “Drunk _and_ high?” He looked back at Marci. “We can imply malice from her reckless behavior, which lands us squarely at murder.”

Vermont? What the hell?

“Or,” Gonzalez said, speaking more gently to Karen, “you can cooperate with Tower’s questioning.”

“She already agreed to testify, you moron,” Marci spat.

“Yes, but we expect a great deal of resistance from her on the stand.” Malone lowered his voice conspiratorially. “If we’re not satisfied with your performance, Mrs. Murdock, bear in mind that we are more than capable of sharing what we know with the media…or even with the state of Vermont, perhaps pressuring the state to make sure your offense doesn’t go unpunished.”

Karen’s chest was rising and falling rapidly, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps. Marci stood up. “I need a moment with my client.”

Malone and Gonzalez exchanged exaggeratedly concerned glances. “Of course.”

Karen almost tripped over her chair as Marci led out of the café, ignoring the waiter questioning if they wanted anything to go. The bell chimed again. Once on the sidewalk, Marci dragged Karen past several other stores and into the alley around back. It smelled like old tuna.

Karen’s eyes were red-rimmed as she stood there hugging herself, but when Marci touched her shoulder, Karen went _limp_ , sagging back against a wall that probably hadn’t been cleaned in years with her hands pressed to her mouth. It didn’t stifle the short, shocked sob that burst from her chest.

“Vermont?” Marci demanded. “What’s this about Vermont?”

“I—” Karen stared unblinkingly at Marci like _Marci_ was supposed to explain all this. “It’s where I’m from, where—” She squeezed her eyes shut, but the first couple of tears slipped down her cheeks anyway.

Marci _hated_ when clients started crying. “You need to tell me everything. _Yesterday_.”

Her tongue flicked out to wet her trembling lips. “Um, I—I was young and stupid and I was—I was high and I was driving and there was a crash—” She gulped in a shaky, shallow breath and ran her fingers under her eyes, trying to wipe at the tears without ruining her mascara. It was a lost cause.

“Slow down. Take a breath.” Marci stood in front of her, forcing Karen to meet her gaze. “Your brother?”

It took about ten seconds before she was breathing steadily enough to speak. Which was still not very steady. “He was in the car. He—I shouldn’t’ve been driving, but I didn’t—I didn’t mean to—we crashed.”

And the brother didn’t make it.

“Take a breath,” Marci said again, slipping her phone out of her bag. “Lemme look into this.”

“I wasn’t charged,” Karen was mumbling, almost as if to herself. “Small town, my dad knew the officer, he just…he wanted me to go…”

Her fifteen seconds of research told her Vermont had no statute of limitations on murder. Manslaughter, however, had a statute of limitations of only six years. “How long ago was this?”

“He was—we were kids.” Karen suddenly stood up straighter. She was still a sniffling, sobbing wreck, but she was obviously trying to pay attention. “I was nineteen.”

Good. Marci kept her expression carefully blank as she tried another search, this one to determine how Vermont differentiated between murder and manslaughter.

And…not good. “Did you know you were high when you got behind the wheel?”

“What do you think?” Karen muttered.

“That’s a yes?”

“ _Yes_ , I wasn’t—yes, I _knew_ , all right? What does that mean?”

It meant she was probably looking at murder, not manslaughter. Which meant the statute of limitations couldn’t save them. Fan-freaking-tastic. “And you didn’t think to tell me about this?”

Karen’s mouth hung open. “It—it was years ago, and I wasn’t charged, and—”

“Forget it.” Marci did not swear, except in her head, which was shouting a chorus of creative expletives. This was what she got for taking Foggy’s friend on as a client. She’d gotten casual, comfortable, and forgotten to go over the basics, and now look. Blindsided. And Matt, Matt hadn’t told her about it either, maybe because he was too emotionally compromised to ask the hard questions and didn’t actually know, or maybe because he was so emotionally compromised that he’d kept it a secret.

She was gonna turn him in for legal malpractice, right before she turned herself in.

Then she was gonna murder him.

But she kept all homicidal thoughts off her face and out of her voice. “If you weren’t charged, how do they know about it? Have you told anyone?”

“I didn’t even tell Foggy,” Karen whispered. “Just—just Matt.”

Marci was going to murder him slowly and painfully. “Clearly not just Matt,” she snapped, “unless Matt thought blabbing to the prosecutors was a brilliant idea.”

Karen scrubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands. “Felix Manning. A fixer for Fisk. He—he looked into my history, my childhood, my—my family.”

There. That was something. “I’ll find him,” Marci promised. “Tell me everything you remember about the accident.”

Karen bypassed pale as her skin turned gray.

Marci changed tactics. “Tell me what evidence they have. Why weren’t you charged?”

“He—he said my family went through enough.”

“Who?”

“The officer. At the scene. Officially, it was just K-Kevin there…”

That was good, that was something. “So there’s no mention of you in the police report? What about drug testing?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay.” Marci forced her mouth into a smile. “I can’t promise anything, but it sounds like this might be a bluff. In addition to the fact that they set up this meeting without Matt, which is a violation of ethics since he’s technically your lawyer, not me.” They were probably banking on the fact that Karen wouldn’t want anyone digging into the nature of the conversation. “I’ll look into—”

“He would’ve told Fisk _everything_ ,” Karen blurted out.

This Felix guy again. “I’ll figure out exactly what he told Fisk. I promise.”

“I can’t…I can’t do this, Marci, I can’t—”

“Yes, you can,” Marci said sharply. “If half the things Foggy’s told me about you are true, you can absolutely do this. And Matt needs you to keep it together, so you _will_ do this. Understand?”

Karen bit her lip, hard enough for a drop of blood to well up against her teeth. “I know. I know.”

Marci wasn’t one for comfort, but she put her hand on Karen’s shoulder again anyway. “I’ll walk you through it and we’ll figure it out. All right?”

Karen nodded rapidly and swallowed hard as she wiped at her eyes, smearing mascara everywhere.

With a sigh, Marci pulled makeup wipes from her bag and passed them to Karen, who accepted them with mumbled thanks and got out a compact mirror from her own purse. But her hand was too unsteady for her to see what she was doing.

Stepping forward, Marci gently lowered the mirror and took the wipes from Karen, folding them in half and dabbing them under her eyes to clear away the tearstains. “There,” she said at last, stepping back. “Good as new.”

Karen stuffed the compact back into her purse, took a deep breath, and nodded again.

“All right. Now let’s go back in there and show these prosecutors that they messed with the wrong person. All right? Karen?”

An icy expression slid across her face. “All right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Give Karen Female Friends 2k19.
> 
> Also, shout-out to Heisey for letting me bounce ideas off someone who actually knows what they're talking about!


	32. After All of My Alibis Desert Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title from "I So Hate Consequences" by Relient K (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E41WK9-ZGIM).

Marci

They had a plan, and they had their parts to play. Fortunately, Marci’s role was basically to be her normal cutting self. She led Karen back to the stupid café, ignored the staff’s cheery greeting, and sat down at the table across from the prosecutors. “To be clear, what exactly do you want Mrs. Murdock to do? Mrs. Murdock who, by the way, is not actually my client.”

They ignored that last part. “We want her to fulfill the terms of her plea agreement by testifying to the fullest extent. In short, all we ask is that she tells the truth, the _whole_ truth, and nothing but the truth.”

“The truth being that Matthew Murdock is Daredevil,” Marci said icily. “That’s the only truth she’s agreed to tell.”

Malone steepled his fingers. “A credible testimony requires context.”

“Which she’ll give,” Marci snapped. “We’ve already gone over this with Tower. She’ll tell the jury not only that she knows who Mr. Murdock is, but how she knows it, which will satisfy her deal.”

Gonzalez pursed her lips, almost apologetically. “She’ll need to give us a bit more than that.”

Marci arched an eyebrow. “Are you suggesting some other kind of deal, Counselor? In which case I hope you’ve got a judge ready to sign off. And have you actually spoken directly with Vermont’s DA, or are you going through a lower-level prosecutor? In which case I’ll need that name as well.”

They were too professional to exchange glances, but it was obvious they had nothing when they gave her nothing. “We’ll find the right judge after we’ve secured Mrs. Murdock’s agreement,” Gonzalez said smoothly.

Marci scoffed. “You’ll be waiting a long time. She won’t agree to anything until you show us some actual authority behind you.”

Malone leaned forward. “Listen,” he whispered—actually _whispered_ , “a judge won’t be able to help her if this gets leaked to the media.”

“Does your office have a problem with leaking confidential information?”

He held her gaze. “Not at the moment. That could always change.”

At least now they all knew where they stood. She mirrored him, leaning closer until their faces were a breath apart. “And I could always turn you in to the bar, and you could always lose your license.”

“But that won’t help Mrs. Murdock when news of her involvement in her brother’s death is spread to every corner of Hell’s Kitchen, will it? And if you want to report me to the bar, you won’t be able to prove that I even visited this café.”

“Watch me,” she hissed.

“Wait,” Karen interrupted, biting her lip and making it bleed again.

“Karen,” Marci said warningly.

“Wait,” Karen repeated, raising tremulous blue eyes to the two prosecutors seated across from her. “If Felix Manning is behind this, I know there’s nothing I can do to get out from under this.”

“Sensible,” Malone murmured.

“What are you saying?” Gonzalez asked quietly.

“I’m saying…” Karen twisted her wedding ring around her finger.  “I’m saying I’ll do it. I’ll testify to whatever you want.” She blinked, hard, as if fighting back tears. “Just…don’t ask me to _lie_. But I’ll tell you the—the whole truth.”

Malone looked delighted.

Gonzalez kept her expression slightly more under control. She nodded sympathetically. “Thank you, Mrs. Murdock. We understand how difficult this is, and we’ll do our best to shield you throughout this—”

“Just tell me what you want me to say,” Karen interrupted, sounding scared and ashamed at the same time.

“Of course.” Gonzalez voice was soothing as she placed a notebook on the table and clicked a pen. “Let’s go over our expectations, shall we?”

 

Later that day, Marci ambushed Matt at the old Nelson and Murdock office. He was camped out at his desk, wearing dark jeans and a blue-gray button-up and listening to something with his sunglasses off. Stalking resolutely past Foggy’s office (the lights were off, the door was shut), she jerked his earbuds out.

Not her smartest move. He jolted backwards into what was clearly a fighting stance, hands darting up to hover by his chin, eyes wide. A second later, his stance relaxed and he glared. “What was that?”

“Couldn’t you smell me or something?”

“I was _focusing_ ,” he grumbled, reaching for his water bottle on his desk.

On Tower’s physician’s deposition, judging by the thin voice coming up from his earbuds. “Did you know Karen killed her brother?” Marci demanded.

He choked on his water. “How do you know about that?”

Swearing under her breath, Marci snatched his water bottle away. “And you didn’t think that was information _I_ should know?”

“She’s not on trial!”

“No, but Fisk told a couple of bloodsucking prosecutors about it and now they’re running around threatening her with every legal argument they can think of if she doesn’t go into detail— _extreme_ detail, by the way—into everything she’s ever seen, heard, or imagined you doing as Daredevil.”

“How does Fisk—”

“Some guy named Felix Manning. You know him?”

Matt’s lips pressed into a thin, white line. “We’ve met,” he said evenly. “He’s credible.”

Marci shrugged out of her jacket, hanging it on the back of a chair and leaning forward with her elbows on the desk. “The prosecutors have to know they don’t have enough evidence. Not the kind that’s admissible. What are the odds that Manning has something on them?”

“I’ll take care of it.”

Oh, no. “You’re out on bail. Don’t push it.”

He shrugged.

“Matt Murdock, so help me—”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Matthew _Michael_ Murdock.”

He blinked. “Wow, really?”

“You’re not paying me enough for this,” she seethed.

“No one else could’ve found such a perfect wedding cake,” he argued.

Idiot. She slapped the thick file on the table. “Is there anything else I need to know? About either of you? Any more sordid secrets?”

“I’m a vigilante,” he said, dripping in sarcasm.

“I will walk away from this case,” she threatened.

Between her glare and her steely voice, anyone else would’ve found the threat legitimate. But Matthew Michael Murdock, human polygraph, just shook his head. “You won’t,” he said softly. “Thank you for that.”

“Shut up.” She closed her eyes. “We convinced them that she’ll go along with it. Buying ourselves time. But she won’t.”

When she opened her eyes, he was frowning and his voice was…intense. “She should. Nothing she can say is terribly damning anyway. Except…”

“Except what?”

His face did something weird and conflicted before he shook his head again. “Except nothing. But I’m guessing that won’t matter, will it? If she doesn’t testify convincingly, they’ll release the information. They’ll want her to make something up, if that’s what it takes. Right?”

At least he seemed to be thinking this through. “Probably. We’ll just have to cross that road when we get there. I’ll figure out if Tower even knows about this later, and we’ll go from there.”

“Yeah,” Matt said, sounding distant now, like his thoughts were elsewhere. “Good thinking.”

“What are _you_ thinking?” Marci asked suspiciously.

“Nothing,” he said quickly. Too quickly. “Just, uh, I talked to Claire the other day. In preparation for Tower calling Dr. Rowe? She wants to testify. For me.”

Part of Marci wanted to press, wanted to make sure she knew _exactly_ how he was going to respond to news of the pressure Karen was under. But he seemed accepting of the facts. Maybe? Possibly?

She studied his face, but he was wearing his glasses and he looked like just another earnest lawyer planning a case.

She needed Foggy. Foggy spoke Matt’s language, Foggy could read Matt’s face like a piece of evidence.

She sighed. “Claire. All right. Tell me about her.”

 

Marci was responsible for setting up Karen’s final check with Tower. Even though Karen wasn’t her client, Karen was a witness in Matt’s case and Marci was Matt’s attorney. More importantly, she needed to make sure Matt wasn’t present for the meeting. You’d think avoiding a blind guy in handcuffs would be easy. Throw in supersenses and Matt Murdock’s classic stubbornness, however….

She finally managed it by intimidating Tower’s secretary into submission. Now she and Karen were on their way to the meeting, heels clicking in sync over the smooth floor.

“The more you fight with Tower, the more likely it is you’ll face some kind of proceeding later,” she reminded Karen, who was twisting a delicate bracelet around and around her wrist. “Even if Vermont doesn’t care, this Felix Manning person sounds like he’ll find a way to cause trouble.”

Like putting this latest story in the news. Marci was honestly skeptical whether Karen could survive that. Her voicemail was already full of reporters asking for statements about whether it was true that Daredevil was her client. If Manning leaked Karen’s past, the story would catch fire.

“Felix Manning can do what he wants,” Karen said icily. “I’m gonna do my best for Matt. It’s no less than what he’d do for me.”

Marci had nothing against romantic gestures, but she needed to make sure Karen was thinking this through. “If you don’t give Tower what he needs, he’ll drop the plea deal and all of this will be for nothing.”

“The only thing I agreed to is testifying to Matt’s identity, right?” Karen argued. “So as long as I admit to that, he can’t renege.”

“He might try.”

“And you’ll fight him on it.”

“You might be underestimating what I’m capable of.”

“Never,” Karen said loftily as they reached Tower’s office.

Knocking on the closed door, Marci tried not to feel too touched. After all, Karen had little choice but to bet her freedom on Marci’s capabilities.

Her eyes slid over Marci’s shoulder, and Marci turned around to see Tower hustling towards them, looking flustered. Marci almost felt sympathetic. Being district attorney was a hard enough job without dealing with a trial as controversial and media-friendly as this.

“Mrs. Murdock,” he said, stopping short right in front of Karen and running a hand down his dark blue tie. “Mrs. Stahl-Nelson.” Unlocking the door, he let them in. Neither Marci nor Karen bothered to sit, and Tower followed their lead. “We’re gonna keep it simple for you, Mrs. Murdock,” he said. “You’ve agreed to testify as to your husband’s identity. I understand that could be difficult for you, but remember that if you fail to testify honestly and fully, the judge may determine that you’ve failed to uphold your end of the plea bargain. You know where that would leave me.”

“I know.”

“So, since you’re a witness for the state of New York, I’ll be calling you to the stand. I’ll ask open-ended questions to invite you to tell your story.” His eyes narrowed. “If you’re having a hard time—after all, he is your husband—I can use some narrower questions to elicit the truth from you. Do you understand this?”

She nodded.

“And you’re ready to cooperate?”

“Well, um…” She blinked wide blue eyes at him. “You probably know this after I was examined in jail, but I’m pregnant.”

“Congratulations,” Tower said blankly, shooting a questioning look at Marci.

“And it’s just, you know…pregnancy brain. You’ve heard of it?”

Pinching his forehead between his eyebrows, Tower sighed heavily. “If you’re suggesting that you may not be competent to testify, I’m afraid that’ll have some negative repercussions for our deal.”

“Oh, no, I’m competent. I just might…forget some details, you know? I’m sorry.”

Tower turned on Marci. “You’ve had her keeping a journal, right? Some kind of recollection?”

Marci raised her eyebrows. “She’s not technically my client.”

Tower sighed again. “I hope you manage to remember enough details, Mrs. Murdock. For your sake, I really hope you do.”

 

Matt

Tower’s second witness was Brett. It was a good decision; Brett could explain the overall situation to the jury before Tower zoomed in on the details of Matt’s conduct through Dr. Rowe, and letting Tower end with a bang—Karen.

Brett radiated confidence as he swore his oath and took his seat, nodding at Tower standing in the middle of the well. He smelled clean, but Matt caught a trace cigar smoke, which made his stomach flip. Foggy should really be here to do this.

But Marci was going to have fun.

Next to Matt, she held a pen at the ready. “Be nice,” he reminded her in a murmur.

“I wouldn’t worry,” she said simply.

“Detective,” Tower began, “please introduce yourself to the members of the jury and spell your last name for the record.”

“I’m Detective Sergeant Brett Mahoney. That’s M-A-H-O-N-E-Y.”

“What is your place of employment, Detective?”

“NYPD,” Brett answered crisply. “Fifteenth precinct. Fourteen years on the force. I was promoted to Detective Sergeant due to my arrest of Frank Castle.”

“What kind of training qualifies you to do your job?”

“Started off in the Academy, plus I take refresher courses and continuing education on different issues as they come up. Some of it’s procedural, some of it’s cultural.”

“Thank you for your service to the community,” Tower said politely. “Are you familiar with the defendant?”

“Matt Murdock? I am.”

“Is he in court today?”

“He is.”

“Can you identify him by an article of clothing?”

Brett gestured. “That’s him sitting at the defense table, with the long cane. And he’s wearing red sunglasses. Because he’s blind.”

Matt stifled a snort.

“Let the record reflect that the witness has correctly identified the defendant,” Tower said, a bit stiffly. “Detective, have you ever interacted with Murdock within the scope of your employment?”

“Well, he’s a defense lawyer,” Brett drawled. “So, yeah.”

“How do those interactions tend to go?”

“We arrest a bad guy, Murdock knocks their punishment down or gets them off.” There was a rustle of clothing as Brett shrugged. “We’re all just doing our jobs.”

Tower paused a second, which Matt took as a good sign. There was no way Tower wanted that last answer ringing in the jury’s minds, which meant he wasn’t pausing because he wanted to; he was pausing because he had to.

Something wasn’t going according to plan.

Tower cleared his throat. “Have you ever investigated Murdock?”

“I’ve been part of the team responsible for investigating allegations made against him, yes.” He did not mention the video.

“Let’s back up to before those allegations. Did you investigate Murdock before?”

“Before?” Brett echoed. “No.”

Tower’s voice didn’t give away his frustration, but Matt could hear his breathing get slightly shallower with tension. “Does your department keep a record of individuals with a history of interacting with the vigilante Daredevil?”

Marci was on her feet. “Objection, Your Honor. Counsel is leading the witness.”

“I’ll give him some leash,” Lauria said.

Matt stifled a sigh.

“Do you need me to repeat the question?” Tower asked innocently.

“I got it,” Brett answered, just as innocently. “And, yes, we’ve got a fat file on all those people. Hell, _I’m_ in that file.”

“Are you personally responsible for maintaining that file?”

“Nope.”

Tower faltered for a second. “You’re not?”

“Once we realized we should put my name in with the others, it was decided I shouldn’t have any custody over it. I can’t remember the last time I even saw it.”

And just like that, Tower lost the ability to get the file in as evidence. At least, not under Brett. He’d have to call another witness and risk boring the jury or annoying Judge Lauria. Lauria might hate Matt and Marci, but judges weren’t generally pleased with adding witnesses last minute either.

Besides, it made Tower look unprepared. Although he was looking pretty unprepared either way.

More importantly, whatever that file said about Matt was now lost in the murky world of hearsay.

“Let’s move on to the more recent investigation. What led the department to open an investigation against the defendant?”

“Wilson Fisk, trying to use the department as his personal police force against his enemies.”

Tower stiffened. “What _evidence_ led the department to open the investigation?”

Another rustle of fabric; another shrug. “A video, sent by Wilson Fisk.”

“Do you recall what was on that video?”

“I don’t.”

Tower’s heartrate was increasing. “You never watched it?”

“No,” Brett said, and…interesting. His heartrate remained steady. “Sorry, Counselor.”

“To clarify, is it your testimony today that you never watched the video that triggered the latest investigation into the defendant?”

“That’s right.”

Tower’s voice rose slightly. “Detective Sergeant, do you recall giving a deposition prior to testifying today?”

Matt leaned forward slightly in his chair. Those words were a warning sign to everyone who understood them that Tower thought he’d caught Brett in a lie. Impeaching his own witness was a bold move, but Brett wasn’t exactly playing along.

“I do,” Brett said, a slight smirk in his voice.

“And you were under oath during that deposition, weren’t you?”

“I was.”

“Just like you are today?”

“Yes.”

“Your Honor, permission to approach the witness with his prior deposition.”

“Granted,” Judge Lauria said curiously.

Tower rifled through some papers at his desk, snatched up the one he wanted, barely flashed the document at Marci before heading towards Tower.

“Excuse me,” Matt said quietly, unable to help himself. “Could you give me the chance to verify that?”

Tower stopped. Flushed. He managed to keep his head high as he returned to the defense table, but Matt could smell his embarrassed, frustrated sweat as he handed Marci the document.

“It’s the deposition,” she confirmed for Matt.

Matt flashed Tower a smile. “Thanks.”

“Of course,” Tower said tightly. “My apologies.”

“Didn’t realize you could be so petty,” Marci whispered as Tower slunk back to Brett.

Matt simply arranged his features into a politely interested expression.

“Detective Sergeant, do you recognize this document?” Tower asked.

“I do,” Brett answered.

“What is this document?”

“It’s a transcript of my deposition.”

“How do you know that this is a transcript of your deposition?”

Brett let a tinge of exasperation slip into his voice. “Because I was there.”

“That’s your signature at the bottom?”

“Looks right.”

“And is this a fair and accurate depiction of your deposition as you last saw it?”

“Sure,” Brett said.

“You were under oath when you were deposed?”

“I was.”

“Just like you’re under oath today.”

“Yes.”

Tower raised his voice a little, speaking faster, building momentum. “Detective Sergeant, do you remember when I asked you, during your deposition, if you ever reviewed Mr. Murdock’s video? Line fifty-four,” he added for reference.

“I remember,” Brett said.

“Please read silently while I read aloud your response, on line fifty-five: _My department reviewed it_. Did I read that correctly?”

“Yes,” Brett agreed.

“So you did, in fact, review that video, didn’t you?”

Matt stifled a smirk.

“No,” Brett said calmly. “My department reviewed it.”

“Are you normally left out of the proceedings of your department?” Tower snapped.

Brett leaned back in the chair. “I was out sick for the three days between when my department received the video and when we brought Mr. Murdock in for questioning. You can check that with my superior officer if it makes you feel better.”

Marci tried to cover a triumphant snort with a cough. Didn’t go so well.

Tower snatched the document back. “Your Honor, I request a sidebar.”

Marci made a delighted humming sound as Lauria cleared the courtroom. With Matt holding on to Marci’s elbow, the two of them joined Tower in front of the bench.

Tower was breathing harshly through his nose. “Your Honor, I request permission to treat the witness as hostile.”

“On what grounds?”

“His testimony is deviating from his deposition.”

Lauria leaned forward over her desk. “Doesn’t sound like that to me. To me, it just sounds like he’s playing you.”

Tower didn’t even try to argue the point. “Which just goes to show that he’s an adverse witness. Again, Your Honor, I request permission to treat him as hostile.”

“Go ahead,” Lauria responded incredulously.

“Your Honor,” Marci began.

“I just told him to go ahead,” Lauria snapped.

With a warning squeeze to Marci’s elbow, Matt took a subtle step back. They retreated to their table while Tower dropped Brett’s deposition back off at his desk, then positioned himself in the center of the courtroom, one hand on his hip. As soon as the jury was seated, Tower pointed straight at Brett. Trying to project confidence, trying to give the jury a show to distract from…everything that just happened.

“You’ve responded to the scenes of several crimes here in Hell’s Kitchen where the criminal was allegedly in an altercation with Daredevil.”

“That’s what they tell me.”

“And they’re usually injured when you encounter them.”

“Yes.”

“Broken bones.”

“Sometimes.”

“Bruises.”

“Sometimes.”

“Head wounds.”

“I’m not a doctor,” Brett pointed out.

“You don’t recognize head wounds, Detective?”

“I mean, I can tell if someone’s eyes aren’t focusing, but I’m not an expert.”

“Ultimately, after a history of your department searching for Daredevil, you finally made an arrest.”

“Yes,” Brett said testily.

“You arrested the defendant.”

“Yes.”

“You arrested the defendant here in Hell’s Kitchen.”

“Yes,” Brett growled.

“You arrested the defendant for Daredevil’s crimes.”

“Yes,” Brett snapped.

Having gotten what he needed, Tower moved on. “I’d like to talk to you about other interactions you and members of your force have had with Daredevil. Daredevil has threatened you before, hasn’t he?”

Brett couldn’t deny it; the facts were preserved in report he'd filed. “He kind of...got in my face a couple times, yes.”

“And he did this while bearing a weapon?”

“His clubs, yes.”

“And he’s done this to other officers?”

“Yes,” Brett said helplessly.

“Who, specifically?”

Brett begrudgingly went down a list. Five, six, seven names.

“And some of these individuals have been threatened more than once?”

“Yes,” Brett muttered.

Tower nodded. “I want to talk to you now about physical altercations. You’ve actually been in physical altercations with Daredevil before, haven’t you?”

Again, Brett couldn’t deny it. “Once, before I realized he was trying to help people.”

“Setting aside your personal opinions, isn’t it true that Daredevil attacked you while you were trying to do your job?”

Brett waited like he was trying to figure out another word to use besides “attack” that wouldn’t be completely undermined if Tower  _did_ bring out the old reports. Finally, he seemed to decide it was better to just get it over with. “Yes, all right, you could say that.”

“And during these attacks, Daredevil used weapons?”

“His clubs, I guess.”

Tower didn’t linger, didn’t give Brett the chance to explain or qualify. “Daredevil also has a history of altercations with other police officers.”

“Corrupt officers.”

“All of them?” Tower asked sharply.

“Excuse me?”

“Were _all_ the officers Daredevil had an altercation with, besides you, corrupt?”

“To my knowledge, yes.”

Matt tensed.

“Detective, do you recall Officer Sullivan of the NYPD?”

A cold feeling sank into Matt’s gut.

Brett hesitated. “Yes.”

“He was held hostage by Daredevil in an abandoned building, wasn’t he?”

“I…believe so. We never actually confirmed that Daredevil was at that building.”

“But a report was filed by the NYPD of the incident.”

Matt clenched his left hand into a fist.

“Yes,” Brett said slowly.

“Your Honor, I ask to approach the witness with State’s exhibit one.” With Lauria’s permission, Tower picked up the document, took his time letting Marci review it, then dropped it off on the table in front of Brett’s. He quickly authenticated the document and laid the appropriate foundation for admission, including laying the foundation for the business records exception to hearsay. Marci was unable to make an objection.

“So admitted,” Lauria ordered.

“Detective, according to this report, filed by your police department, which three individuals were suspected by ESU to be in the building?”

“The Russian, Vladimir Ranskahov, and Officer Sullivan, and…Daredevil.”

“And of those three individuals, which two were killed at the scene?”

Brett shifted in his chair. “Ranskahov and Officer Sullivan.”

“Now, Officer Sullivan wasn’t corrupt, was he?”

“Not…not to our knowledge.”

“He’d only had two months on the job, hadn’t he?”

“That sounds right. I don’t remember exactly.”

“He was a rookie.”

“Yes.”

Tower paused, building suspense, before saying, “Please describe for the jury Officer Sullivan’s physical state when he was found, according to this report.”

Brett cleared his throat. “He was, uh, _reported_ to have been found duct taped to a pole with, uh, a stab wound to the neck.”

“Thank you.” Tower let out a slow breath, heartrate steadying out. “Pass the witness.”

“ _Marci_ ,” Matt hissed. “That wasn’t me.”

“I know,” she said coolly, standing as Lauria asked if the defense had a cross. “Yes, Your Honor. Permission to enter the well?”

“Granted.”

“Thank you.” Her heels echoed as she walked to the center of the well, where she stood tall. “Good afternoon, Detective.”

“Afternoon,” Brett said, still sounding a bit uncertain after Tower’s examination.

Her voice was sweet as she began. “Let me ask a few more questions about that report in front of you. Who filed it?”

“One of our other officers at the scene. Officer Johnson.”

“Did Officer Johnson personally find the bodies of Officer Sullivan or Vladimir Ranskahov?”

“No.”

“According to that report, who told him about the bodies?”

“It was ESU. Three agents.”

“Now, at that time, Fisk had corrupted a lot of officers in different levels of government, hadn’t he?”

“He definitely had.”

“To your knowledge, Detective, are those agents still with ESU?”

“Uh…no.”

“Do you know why they left?”

“I don’t.”

“And no one else corroborated their report of the facts?”

“No. It was just them.”

“And they didn’t actually see who stabbed Officer Sullivan.”

“No, they didn’t.”

“Thank you, Detective.”

Matt slowly unclenched his hand. They should’ve anticipated this, should’ve figured out who those agents were, figured out why they’d been let go. Had there been an investigation? Had the investigation actually reached a conclusion? But they hadn’t realized Tower would go this direction.

Still, Marci had done a decent job raising doubt as to those agents’ credibility. For now, she moved on. “I’d like to switch gears, Detective, and ask you about what it’s like dealing with crime day-to-day or night-to-night here in Hell’s Kitchen. As a detective with a long history of working with the NYPD, are you familiar with the response times of the NYPD?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Brett settled into his chair, clearly more relaxed now.

“How are you familiar with them?”

“Well,” Brett said, folding his hands on the table, “responding to calls is something we do every day, so it’s important to know that we do it well. It’s our standard procedure to keep track of response times.”

“Are you aware of whether the NYPD issues reports detailing those response times?”

“Yes, I am,” Brett said blithely. “We regularly issue those reports. I’ve personally reviewed them many times.”

There was a smug smile in Marci’s voice when she addressed the judge. “Your Honor, permission to approach the witness with what has previously been marked for identification as defense’s exhibit one.”

“Show opposing counsel,” Lauria ordered. A bit childishly, in Matt’s opinion, since that was standard.

But there was no annoyance in Marci’s step as she returned to the desk and plucked up the appropriate document, strolled to Tower’s desk, and, with his nod, began walking towards Brett. “Would Your Honor like a courtesy copy?”

“No,” Lauria said icily.

Undeterred, Marci placed the document in front of Brett. “Detective, do you recognize this document?”

“Yes.”

“What is this document?”

“It’s is a report issued by the NYPD showing response time trends to different boroughs.”

“How do you know?”

“I review this report before it’s updated and published.”

“Is the report updated and published at or near the time of each call?”

“It’s updated at the end of each day,” Brett explained.

“Is this a true and accurate copy?”

“It is.”

Marci lifted her chin. “Your Honor, at this time the defense requests that this exhibit be entered into evidence.”

“Any objection?” Lauria asked.

Tower stood up. “Hearsay and relevance, Your Honor."

The hearsay objection was taken care of easily enough, since the report fit under the business records exception just as well as the ESU agents’ report. As for relevance, Marci’s response was smooth and confident. “It goes directly towards the imminence and necessity prongs of Mr. Murdock’s defense of the people of Hell’s Kitchen. Any confusion will be cleared up by the end of the detective’s testimony.”

With a quiet sigh, Lauria made a note. “The document is admitted.”

Marci returned to her place in the well. “Detective, the NYPD’s response time to critical emergencies five years ago was almost eight minutes, isn’t that right?”

Brett took a moment to study the document. “Yes.”

“And the NYPD’s response time to serious emergencies five years ago was almost ten minutes, isn’t that right?”

“Almost ten, yes.”

“And the most recent data you have show that the NYPD’s response time to critical emergencies now decreased by about a minute, right?”

“Yes, we’re at almost seven minutes instead of almost eight minutes.” Brett sounded a little bit proud about that fact.

“But the response time to serious emergencies now is almost _eleven_ minutes, isn’t that right?”

“That’s true.”

Marci paused to let that sink in. “Detective, in your line of work, you’ve witnessed some physical fights, haven’t you?”

“More than I can count.”

“You’ve witnessed fights between two males of similar skill?”

“Before I arrest them? Sure.”

“Detective, how long do those fights usually last?”

Brett cracked his neck. “Less than a minute. Between forty and fifty seconds, usually.”

Marci’s head tilted towards the jury before she focused on Brett again. “Detective, would you say a fight between an assailant and an unassuming victim, such as an elderly tourist or a teenaged girl, would probably be over even faster?”

“It’d be over in a blink. One or two good hits is all it’d take.”

Marci hummed thoughtfully, taking her time to let the jury think about the significance of that line of questioning. Then: “Your Honor, I move to publish defense’s exhibit one to the jury.”

“You may.”

“Let the record reflect that I am approaching the witness to retrieve the exhibit,” she said as she did so, then handed the document to the foreperson before returning to the center of the well one last time. “So, Detective, you’ve received reports about incidents involving Daredevil, haven’t you?”

“Yes. I made up a list a while back, actually.”

“You made up a list on your own?”

“That’s right.”

Because of Foggy.

“But the department doesn’t keep a list?”

Brett shifted his weight in his chair. “Well, we write it up in our reports if we encounter Daredevil, or we encounter someone who’s encountered Daredevil. But you gotta understand how many people that is.”

“How many people _is_ it, Detective?”

“Average number of reports that mention him is six to eight a night, but we figure the actual number is probably triple that.”

“Why is that?”

“You gotta understand. We usually only hear about it if the civilian is hurt, or maybe if someone else sees the assault and calls it in. If a civilian gets attacked but Daredevil stops the assault before the civilian is severely injured, the last thing the civilian wants is to call the police and talk to us. They just wanna go home, put the whole thing behind them.”

Marci nodded. “Now, Detective, if Daredevil failed to respond as quickly as he did, and it took the NYPD nine to eleven minutes to arrive on-scene, what is the likely outcome for the victim—in your experience?”

Brett’s voice hardened. “Serious injury. Possibly death.”

“Thank you.” Marci cocked her head briefly at the jury. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, for the record, Tower would realistically not call Fisk first. The strategy with a case is to use primacy/recency to put your best witnesses first and last, and "bury" the weaker witnesses. But I put Fisk first because I think it's more dramatic. :)
> 
> Apparently New York uses the English Rule which allows cross to go beyond the scope of direct. Yay! I was totally gonna do that anyway but it's nice to know that this is semi-realistic.
> 
> Finally, those numbers I found for Marci? Totally a real thing! Check it out: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/911reporting/reports/response-time-trends.page.
> 
> *edit* I added a few questions about Matt's actual arrest and the fact that the arrest took place in Hell's Kitchen because apparently those are Very Important Questions that every prosecutor asks the arresting officer and I just didn't think of it. Whoops.


	33. I Am the One that They Warned Me About

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Schizophrenia" by the Wedding (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbMO6LRCz78).
> 
> I'm handwaving a bit of hospital procedure stuff. At least, I think I'm handwaving? I couldn't find enough explanation on the internet to know one way or the other.

Matt

It was still kind of hard to wrap his head around what Brett did for him, and even harder to wrap his head around the fact that, to hear Brett tell it, other cops would’ve done the same if Tower had been careless enough to call them. As it was, maybe some of Foggy rubbed off onto Brett when they were four because Tower…Tower should not have been that thrown off.

He could imagine what Foggy would say, fondness in his voice. _I always knew Brett was destined to save us in our direst hour._

The questions about Sullivan had been a surprise, but they weren’t the end of the world. He could tell his side of the story when he testified. And if the jury already knew that Fisk was responsible for blowing up the Russians and shooting the other cops at the scene, why shouldn’t they believe that Fisk was also responsible for Vladimir and Sullivan?

He knew better than to get cocky, though. Especially because this next witness was crucial to Tower’s case—and an expert. She’d never testified in court before, but her deposition made it clear that she knew how to handle herself under pressure.

Well, Matt always loved a challenge. And since Marci couldn’t read heartbeats, he got to take point on cross.

As for Dr. Rowe, she was currently sitting behind Tower, waiting to be called. This was the point when Foggy would be sliding closer to give Matt commentary on the witness’ appearance, usually with one or two references to some minor character from a movie Matt hadn’t seen.

Marci was more efficient. “She chose a terrible shade of lipstick,” she whispered.

“Thanks for the information.”

“It’s almost purple.”

“Good to know.”

At last, Lauria got things underway again, though she seemed more brusque than usual. Probably because she didn’t want to listen to the upcoming highly technical testimony. Matt wondered if her ire would fall back on Tower or Marci or both.

Tower must be picking up on the same vibe, because he jumped right into things instead of letting suspense grow. “Good afternoon. Please introduce yourself, selling your last name for the record.”

“Dr. Michelle Rowe,” the witness said. Her voice was nasal; Matt instantly hated her. “R-O-W-E.”

“Where do you work, Doctor?”

“Metro-General Hospital.”

“What do you do there?”

“I’m a physician assigned to the Emergency Room.”

“Are you licensed to practice medicine in New York?”

“I am. I got my license over twenty years ago.”

“Did it take a lot of education to get to where you are now?” Tower asked knowingly, a slight smile in his voice for the jury’s benefit.

Rowe nodded reluctantly, like she’d been pushed into divulging her credentials. “You could say that. I have two bachelor’s degrees, one in biology and one in chemistry. From there, I went to Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Colombia University where I earned my Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine.”

“What is osteopathic medicine?”

“It’s a specialized area of medicine with emphasis on musculoskeletal system. As the name suggests, we specialize on bones, but also the muscular and nervous systems as well.”

“And what other training did you receive to qualify you to practice osteopathic medicine?”

“After obtaining my license, I completed four years of residency under Dr. Shubin. I then chose to take an additional exam to earn my board certification.”

“Why did you decide to become a doctor?”

“I want to help people,” Rowe said earnestly, but there was a nervous skip to her heart. Maybe she’d made the decision for the money, then? Or pressure from someone else?

“When did you come to Metro-General?”

“I’ve been at Metro-General for the past fifteen years. I practice emergency medicine full time.”

Tower took the time to enter Rowe’s résumé into evidence, asking questions about all of Rowe’s extra training and certifications and, just to drive home the point, even a few questions about an article Rowe had written for a research journal, before finally publishing the résumé to the jury. Tower nodded. “Just a few more general questions. First, do you have experience working with Daredevil’s victims in the ER?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And—”

“Objection!” Matt interrupted. “Lack of foundation as to this witness’ ability to determine whether any particular victims—patients—ever encountered Daredevil.”

Lauria directed her response at Tower. “I assume you’ll be laying that foundation?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“I’ll see where this goes. Overruled.”

Matt was annoyed but not surprised. At least he’d gotten his objection on record. He sat down again.

Tower cleared his throat. “Dr. Rowe, when you receive a patient in the ER, how do you ensure that your analysis of the situation is accurate?”

A shrug. “I adhere to the standard of care in my profession, which is fairly uniform throughout the United States. My familiarity with this standard of care comes from my hours of continuing education, time spent perusing academic journals, or new top-down procedures implemented throughout the hospital.”

“Did you apply such a standard of care to your treatment of the victims related to this case?”

“I did.”

“Did you talk with any other members of the ER staff at Metro-General about their application of this standard of care with regards to the victims related to this case?”

“I did.”

“And did you review their reports as well as your own?”

“Yes.”

“When you were asked to review the facts of how these other physicians treated the victims, could you determine whether _they_ deviated from the standard of care?”

“Yes, and they did not.”

Tower nodded. “Thank you. Your Honor, I offer Dr. Rowe as an expert in the field of osteopathic medicine.”

“Fine,” Lauria said. It had been agreed to at a pre-trial hearing anyway, but Tower wanted to show off her credibility to the jury.

“Thank you.” Tower slipped one hand into his pocket. “Now, Doctor, are you familiar with victims of street brawls?”

Rowe didn’t hesitate. “Of course.”

“What kinds of injuries do those victims tend to have?”

“Well, your average street fight is messy. They’re throwing each other against walls and pummeling each other, and there seems to be little thought aside from punching as hard and as fast as possible. The bruising is spread across the body, including less vulnerable targets such as the chest along with more vulnerable targets such as the throat and the joints.”

“What kind of injuries do Daredevil’s victims tend to have?”

Matt stood up. “Objection, Your Honor, for assuming facts not in evidence. It has not been proven—”

“I’ll rephrase,” Tower interrupted. “Is there another set of victims you’ve seen, who might have different types of injuries?”

With the jury primed to believed that the injuries Rowe was about to describe had come from Daredevil, Rowe addressed Tower’s question. “Yes. We at Metro come up with shortcuts for referring to different types of victims. So we have our brawlers, as mentioned previously. But we also have a set of victims we refer to as having been Daredeviled.”

Great. _Great_.

“Do you personally examine some of the victims in that group?”

“I do.”

“What does the examination normally involve?”

“There are two main parts to the process,” the doctor said smoothly; she’d clearly been prepped. “There’s the actual examination and then there’s the paperwork.”

“What kind of paperwork?”

“Medical records, of course.”

“And are these medical records made regularly?”

“Yes, it’s standard procedure.”

“And who makes those medical records?”

“Whoever treats the victim has firsthand knowledge of the injuries sustained. Sometimes that’s the nurses, sometimes it’s me. If the nurses fill out the record, I still have to sign off on them after I see the victim.”

“How soon after the examination do you make the records?”

“Right away.” Her heartbeat skipped a little, but Matt was reluctant to push that lie on cross. Even if he could get Rowe to confess, he figured the jury would sympathize with occasionally procrastinating paperwork.

Besides, fighting over the evidence that Tower was about to try to get in would only draw even more attention to it. And it was ugly. Which meant Matt’s best bet was not to fight it and thereby reinforce just how ugly it was.

“So, Doctor, would you recognize copies of those records?”

“I would.”

Tower returned to his desk and scooped up some files. “Let the record reflect that I am showing opposing counsel what has previously been marked as State’s exhibits two through twenty-three.”

Damnit. Matt and Marci had reviewed them before the trial, and it wasn’t going to be any more pleasant hearing about them now. Although confidential information had been redacted, the details of the injuries were still grisly.

This time, Tower seemed prepared to wait patiently for Marci to verify the documents for Matt, which she did as quickly as possible so as not to stretch out the point. Not that it made a difference; this was gonna be horrible no matter what.

“It’s redundant,” Marci whispered as Tower approached Doctor Rowe. “403—”

“I know, shut up.”

Tower breezed through the formal steps, getting his expert to recognize, identify, and authenticate the documents before requesting admission into evidence.

“Any objection?” Lauria asked.

He had to try; the issue was too important. But the fact that the issue was so important was precisely why he expected the objection to fail. Still. He stood up. “Yes, Your Honor. These documents constitute needlessly cumulative evidence  given the low probative value since we still don’t know whether any of these patients were injured by Daredevil. They should be excluded out of respect to Your Honor’s time and the jury’s time.”

There. Even if this failed, at least he sounded like a nice guy. Kind of. Maybe.

“Any response?” Lauria prompted Tower.

“Your Honor, these documents speak directly to one of the prongs of the affirmative defense Mr. Murdock has raised. He claims that his violence has always proportional. These documents will show the opposite.”

“I’m inclined to agree. Just don’t drag this out, Mr. Tower.” She scratched a note. “Mr. Murdock, your objection is overruled. The exhibits are admitted.”

“Worth a shot,” Marci whispered encouragingly as Matt sat back down. At least they’d preserved the issue for appeal.

“Kill me now,” he whispered back, maintaining what he hoped was an unperturbed expression.

“Doctor,” Tower said, with just a hint of smugness, “when were these records made?”

“They were all made within the past three years.”

“Do the records indicate the time of day or night when the victim arrived for medical help?”

“All of these patients were brought in at night, most of them around two or three in the morning.”

“And is there anything about the _substance_ of the records that these documents have in common?”

“Of course.” There was a faint rustling sound as she spread the records over her desk. “The injuries here are remarkably similar. Most of the injuries still come from blunt force trauma, but the target zones seem to be chosen with great care. Again, we’re talking about hitting parts of the body to do the most damage.”

Matt stood up again, ignoring Marci’s hiss of disapproval. “Objection, lack of foundation. Your Honor, this witness isn’t qualified to guess about whether targets were chosen with care.”

Lauria raised her hand before Tower could argue. “I agree with Mr. Murdock that Dr. Rowe is not qualified to testify as to…what was it…carefully-chosen target zones? Dr. Rowe, please limit your answers to your training.”

“Doctor,” Tower began again. “I’d like to talk about the sheer severity of the injuries. You’ve mentioned blunt force trauma. How _much_ trauma are we talking about?”

Dr. Rowe cleared her throat. “It’s not uncommon, with this set of victims, to be working with individuals who bear multiple broken bones each as well as bruising throughout the body and some kind of head wound.”

“Can we break those down one by one? Talk to us about the broken bones.”

“With these types of victims, there are usually three types of broken bones: comminuted fractures, angulation fractures, or rotational fractures.

“Can you explain those?”

“A comminuted fracture, like the one here—” She pointed to one of the records, “—is one where the bone is broken in multiple places. An angulation fracture means the bone is being bent, usually with compression on one side of the bone and tension on the other. You can see an example here.” She pointed again. “A rotational fracture means the bone is twisted, usually due to violent rotation of the arm or leg.” She held up yet another record. “This victim experienced two rotational fractures on the same arm.”

“Why are these types of breaks significant?”

“Let me create a contrast. If someone comes into the ER from a fight with a broken bone, the type of break is probably a single transverse fracture or crush fracture. Those types of injuries are…well, not _easy_ to inflict, I imagine, but mostly require brute force. These fractures, in addition to being exceedingly painful and rendering the limb useless, require skill.”

Matt clenched his jaw. That wasn’t strictly true; a brawler could cause all types of breaks depending on the leverage used. It didn’t require any particular training to snap someone’s arm over a railing or bend it backwards and slam the body against a wall. But Matt wasn’t confident he’d be able to get the expert to admit to any of that on cross, and it’d just look worse if he tried and failed.

Tower kept going, asking about bruising and head wounds. None of it was pretty. The expert droned on and on about bruising around the throat, lingering on evidence of strangulation, before moving on to brain damage from lack of oxygen or blunt force, rarely using a word with fewer than three syllables, often holding up medical records to demonstrate, sometimes holding up other visual aid exhibits, such as pictures of necks or the brain. The jury leaned forward in their chairs with bated breath.

 “Now, Doctor,” Tower said, “based on your experience and training, can you tell, if you’re working on a victim with multiple injuries, at what point the injuries should have been incapacitating?”

The physician nodded. “If we’re talking about individuals engaged in a street fight, some injuries are entirely debilitating. A broken knee, for instance, takes the leg out of commission entirely. At that point, if the objective is to stop the battle, further injury is superfluous.”

Superfluous.

Matt curled his lip; that last answer was sheer speculation wrapped in a veneer of expert testimony, but he wasn’t confident he could win an objection battle over it, not with Judge Lauria. He’d have to undo the damage as best he could on cross.

Tower let that word settle over the jury for a moment. “Now, did any of the patients talk to you about what caused their injuries?”

Tower couldn’t ask _who_ caused the injuries without finding a separate hearsay exception, but rule 803(3) admitted statements made for the purpose of seeking medical treatment.

“Yes. Several of the patients told either myself or the nurse that they were injured by a metal club or baton, which matched the injuries we could see on their bodies.”

“Can you point to the records belonging to those patients?”

Rowe leafed through the documents, plucking out particular exhibits and holding them up. Under Tower’s guidance, she went into greater detail regarding the specific date and time that the patient came to the hospital, explained the injuries to the jury, and highlighted the specific injuries that she determined had been caused by the weapons.

“Doctor, do you see a lot of patients with injuries from clubs or batons like that?”

“No,” Rowe said, angling in her chair to make sure the words were directed towards the jury.

“I’d like to talk specifically about one of those records. If you could look at exhibit twelve…do you remember anything about that particular victim?”

Rowe shuffled through the documents. “Yes. This victim was extremely emotionally distraught when he was brought in. He was in a lot of pain from several broken fingers, and he seemed afraid.”

“Were you able to calm him down?”

“Eventually.”

“Did he say anything before he calmed down?”

Great. The excited utterance exception to hearsay.

“Yes.” Rowe turned towards the jury again. “He said, ‘Daredevil did it.’”

“Thank you.” Tower sounded like he was trying hard not to sound too pleased with himself. “Your Honor, I move to publish state’s exhibits two through twenty-three to the jury.”

“Granted.”

“Thank you.” Once the foreperson had the stack of documents, Tower returned to his table. “Your witness,” he tossed over his shoulder at Matt.

“Defense?” Lauria prompted.

Matt stood up a bit too fast; Marci touched his leg and he slowed down, taking his time to straighten his cane and making sure to trail his fingers over the desk as he found his way to the center of the courtroom.

Experts were tricky. No matter how much Matt talked to Claire or studied on his own, his knowledge level just wouldn’t match Rowe’s. Which meant he couldn’t challenge her on her particular conclusions. Instead, he had to challenge her knowledge base. Which could easily come across as weak—especially to a jury that was taught from shows to expect rapid-fire questions with a dramatic conclusion where the witness broke down on the stand.

One nice thing about crossing experts, however, was that the jury tended to see the expert and the lawyer on more equal footing. Whereas the jury might be affronted if a lawyer tore apart a lay witness, sympathizing more with the witness than with the lawyer trained in argument, a jury sometimes approved of lawyers questioning experts a little more forcefully.

Still, it was a thin line to walk, especially when Matt was defending himself against the expert’s opinions. He’d have to keep a close read of the room to make sure he didn’t offend the jury.

He took his place in the well, listening to the creak of seats as the jury leaned forward. “Doctor, you clearly know a lot about medicine, the human body, and the like. But I want to talk about four things that you _don’t_ know.” He tilted his head. “Firstly, when you see a patient, you _don’t_ know whether he was brought into the hospital because he got hurt while attempting to hurt someone else.”

“I know what my patients tell me,” Rowe said.

“But it’s not your job to confirm whether they’re telling you the truth.”

“No,” Rowe said dryly. “My job is to keep them alive, no matter what injuries they’ve sustained.”

“And no matter what crimes they may have been committing,” Matt pointed out. “Because you don’t know whether the patient was attempting to rob someone.”

“That’s not part of my examination, no.”

“And you don’t know whether the patient was attempting to rape someone.”

“Sometimes that can be determined, depending on the injuries sustained.”

“You’re not a sexual assault nurse, are you?”

“No.”

“And you don’t have any specialized training for sexual assault examinations.”

“No, but as I said, that can sometimes be determined.”

Fine, Matt didn’t want to fight over that point. “And you don’t know whether the patient was attempting to murder someone.”

“No, that’s not part of my examination.”

Good, that was what he needed to hear. Matt set one hand on his hip. “Secondly, when you see a patient with multiple injuries, you don’t know when the injuries occurred relative to one another.”

“Sometimes that can be determined,” Rowe argued. “There are a lot of factors to consider.”

“Well, you can’t tell if a broken leg came before a broken wrist.”

“If the leg was broken with a weapon of some kind such as a rod or club, as evident by the particular bruising, and the patient tells me that the club was subsequently discarded, I can assume that the wrist may have been broken afterwards.”

Crossing experts was either a blast or infuriating. This one was quickly becoming infuriating. “Let’s run with this hypothetical. The patient could be lying about when the club was used.”

“I suppose so,” Dr. Rowe allowed.

“In trusting the patient’s story, you’ve made an assumption that you’re unable to verify,” Matt stressed.

“Based on my experience and the facts in front of me, yes. In my line of work, making assumptions saves lives.”

Matt resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he walked semi-casually a few paces to the left. “To my third point, you said previously that certain injuries are superfluous, but you don’t actually know that, either.”

Rowe sat up straighter, indignant. “As I said, once an assailant’s leg is broken, there’s really no point in also breaking the wrist or giving the assailant a concussion. That’s not even an assumption that requires medical expertise; that’s common sense.”

Matt flashed a thin smile, acknowledging that the point had been made. “I understand that you speak with the patients yourself?”

“Yes…when they’re capable of speech.” The physician’s voice twisted into something faux-sympathetic. “Sometimes the broken jaws or the head injuries are too severe. Several are in comas.”

Matt kept his face impassive. “But no matter what the patients might tell you about facts of how they ended up in your ER, you don’t know _all_ the facts.”

“Of course not. I wasn’t there.”

“Doctor, have you ever fired a handgun?”

“Excuse me?”

“Have you ever fired a handgun?”

“No. I’ve never used a firearm in my life.”

“I understand. Still, you’ve treated individuals with handgun injuries, right?”

“I’ve certainly treated individuals who’ve been shot by guns. I’m not sure as to which kind of gun.”

“Fair enough,” he acknowledged. “But you understand the general value of a gun, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t say guns are valuable, no.”

Matt felt his patience fraying. “You’d agree with me that one benefit of a gun is to inflict significant damage at a longer range?”

“I wouldn’t call that a _benefit_ , but, yes, perhaps.”

“And you understand that _handguns_ are so named because you can fire them with _one hand?_ ”

“Again, I’m not an expert on firearms.”

Matt waited, perfectly willing to make this woman look like an idiot.

She broke a few seconds later. “But, yes, that…makes sense.”

“So you’d agree that someone with a broken leg might still be capable of using a handgun to inflict significant damage?”

“I suppose so.”

“And you don’t know whether any of the assailants you treat in your emergency room had a weapon on them at the time of the altercation.”

“That’s for the police to determine.”

“So do you know whether the assailants had a weapon? Yes or no, please.”

“No, I don’t know.”

Matt smothered his relief at getting through that line of questioning. That was the soundbite they needed for closing. “In fact, you _don’t know_ for certain whether any particular set of victims was actually harmed by Daredevil at all.”

The physician sat up straighter, metaphorical feathers ruffled. “As I mentioned earlier, one told me clearly that ‘Daredevil did it.’ Others have said the same thing. Those capable of speech are quick to blame the vigilante.”

“But they could be lying.”

“It’s possible.”

“And it’s not your job to investigate the _validity_ of those claims.”

“No, that would be the NYPD’s job. I gather that we wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t done that.”

Matt ignored that last part. “So it’s still true that the staff at Metro-General does not know for certain whether any particular patient interacted with Daredevil.”

“No,” she admitted. “We don’t.”

Good enough. It would probably be safest and possibly smartest to end the cross right there.

But Matt wasn’t exactly known for choosing the safest option. And sometimes not the smartest option either.

“Just a few more questions,” he said, clearing his throat. “You’re familiar with Claire Temple, aren’t you?”

Rowe sniffed. “She’s an ER nurse. Works under my supervision sometimes.”

“Right, and after she sees a patient, you review her reports, don’t you?”

“I or one of the other doctors, yes.”

“And either you or one of the other doctors signs off on her reports.”

“Well, yes.”

He opened his mouth to push for the conclusion, something like, _So you agree with her diagnoses_ or _So you respect her medical expertise_. But that was just inviting Rowe to argue. So he offered Rowe a small, polite smile and turned towards Lauria. “Nothing further, Your Honor.”

It wasn’t the dramatic end to a cross the jury would be looking for, but Claire was risking her reputation (and maybe her life) to testify publicly in his defense. The least he could do was try to protect her from attacks to her credibility.

He sat down. Tower had no redirect, so Judge Lauria decided on a short recess for lunch. Matt was definitely not hungry, though.

Because Tower’s next and final witness was Karen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So apparently there’s a whole book on “Medical Records as Evidence” (for just $125!) so I’m almost certainly missing some steps or getting something wrong with my use of these records. But my commitment to this fic does not extend to $125 on yet another textbook. My required reading is expensive enough.
> 
> Note: this examination would probably go longer and there'd be more objection battles but that would get a bit tedious to read (and write, lol) so I tried to stick to the most important/interesting stuff.
> 
> Finally, I promise Foggy will be back really soon!


	34. Wedding Band

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Close" by Nobigdyl (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xp9PsHVTdaw).

Matt

Matt was stressed. He’d anticipated stress; he’d underestimated. First because Dr. Rowe’s testimony had been…harder…than he’d expected. Not because Matt particularly minded listening to the details of the injuries he’d inflicted over the years. In fact, it was almost cathartic. But he kept wondering what Marci was thinking, and that inevitably led to wondering what Foggy would be thinking. And what Foggy would think when ( _when_ ) he woke up.

Part of Matt wished Foggy could sleep until the trial was over and not have to deal with any of this. But a larger part of Matt was selfish and afraid, afraid that they wouldn’t win this, afraid that he’d never talk to Foggy again except in the visiting room of a prison if Foggy didn’t wake up _soon_.

And then, of course, Matt was stressed because apparently Felix Manning knew what happened to Karen and her brother and Matt couldn’t see a guy like him keeping that information to himself. But what did Manning actually want? Was he working for Fisk or for himself? Was he in contact with Tower? With other criminals? And whom did he hate more—Karen or Matt?

The court took a brief recess for lunch after Rowe’s testimony, and while Marci used the time to compose a voice message that the nurses could play for Foggy, Matt tried to fight off a headache from all the sounds echoing off the hard surfaces. He was distracted, however, by three familiar heartbeats and a tiny voice asking loud questions. Ella.

He took off in their direction as fast as the crowded hallways would allow. The long cane did offer certain advantages when it came to clearing a path, and he was waiting for the Valliers by the time they got through security.

Ella wasted not a second before dashing straight towards him. A woman walking past made a hushed gasp and reached to stop her from colliding with the blind man, but Ella was too fast. And Karen was going to testify— _tomorrow_ —that he was Daredevil, so did it really matter if he caught Ella as if he could see her?

Swooping down, he picked her up, holding her snugly in one arm while the other hand held his cane. “Hey,” he said, putting great effort into ignoring the way the other woman was now standing completely still, probably staring. (If he was gonna go to prison for being Daredevil, he might as well be himself in whatever time he had left, right?)

“Matt!” Ella wrapped both arms around him and planted a kiss on his cheek. “I’ve missed you!”

“Yeah, you too. How’s Frank?”

“Which Frank?”

“What?”

“Your puppy?” she clarified.

He had no idea what other Frank she might be talking about since she never called Foggy Frank and the only other Frank Matt knew was the Punisher, whom she had definitely not met because even Karen wasn’t that reckless. “Yeah, my puppy. How is she?”

“She’s _so_ good, Matt. I’m teaching her to army crawl.”

Matt shifted her weight so she was sitting against his hip, pretending she wasn’t getting too big for this. She had a backpack on, though he couldn’t tell what was inside it. “Army crawl, huh?”

“Yeah, like…” She kind of wriggled her body, which was a pointless gesture given the way he was holding her. “Like under barbed wire and stuff.”

“Thank you,” Matt said seriously. “That’s very important for her to learn. Do you know what she really needs to learn, though?”

Ella lowered her voice, leaning in like it was a secret. “What?”

“Parkour.”

Ella gasped in understanding. “Of _course!_ ”

“Of course what?” Maeva asked. She and Micah had finally managed to make their way through security. Matt smelled homemade chicken burritos wrapped in foil in Maeva’s bag, which he assumed was the reason for the delay.

“I have to teach Frank parkour!” Ella explained urgently.

Micah coughed. “What?”

“Not on roofs,” Matt said quickly. “Parks are good for practice. She already knows how to run up the slide on the park at the elementary school off twenty-first and tenth.”

Ella wriggled excitedly. “Mom! Dad! What’s that other park? The one with the yellow swings? They have a _huge_ slide.”

“I don’t think that’s safe for dogs,” Maeva said.

“Or people,” Micah added under his breath.

Dropping her head onto Matt’s shoulder, Ella heaved a sigh as if the entire world had let her down. She was only disappointed for a moment, however, before she lifted her head so quickly that Matt had to crane his neck to keep from getting hit under the jaw. “Wait!” she shouted.

His ear rang. “What?”

“I can teach her to be one of those dogs that sniffs things! Right? Can I? _Please?_ ”

“I like this idea better than the slide,” Micah said immediately.

“I can get Peter to help!”

Matt grinned. “He’s still hanging out with you guys?”

“Most weeknights,” Maeva said. “He’s brought some of his friends.”

Matt’s grin faltered as he remembered the last conversation he’d had with Peter and Foggy at the same time. “Ned?”

“He’s a good kid,” Micah said.

“I like Michelle more,” Ella said thoughtfully.

“It’s not a competition,” Micah told her, in a voice that suggested they’d had this conversation before.

Maeva cleared her throat. “Well, Matt, you’re probably really busy and you don’t need us to keep you. But we brought you some lunch in case you haven’t been able to go anywhere.”

“It smells great,” he said, setting Ella reluctantly on the ground. She stayed close to his side. “And you’re right. We’ve been stuck here every day.” At that moment, a baby shrieked a few hallways down. Matt winced.

Ella instantly noticed. “Are you okay?”

He hadn’t said anything to Marci or Karen and he didn’t usually say anything to Foggy, but he was learning that avoiding Ella’s concern was impossible. “I’m fine. Slight headache. It’s just, you know, kind of loud in here sometimes.”

“Oh, hang on!” Maeva started digging through her purse. “I’ve got ibuprofen in here somewhere, I’m sure of it.”

“I could run grab you some earplugs,” Micah offered. “How much time do you have?”

“Uh.” Matt felt his cheeks go hot under all their attention.

“Do you want this?” Ella pulled something out of her backpack and thrust it at him.

Matt cocked his head as he felt the shape of the plastic toy. “…A gavel?”

“She’s gotten really into courtroom procedure,” Micah said awkwardly. “I’m serious about the earplugs, though. What brand do you—”

“Guys,” Matt interrupted, flustered. “I’m fine. Seriously.” He handed the gavel back to Ella. “And you should keep this, it’s yours.”

Maeva seized the opportunity to press two pills into his now-empty hand. “Ibuprofen. Just eat something in the next few minutes if your stomach is empty.”

He opened his mouth to explain that this was unnecessary, to point out that he was a _lawyer_ and very used to courthouse-induced headaches, but…then he wondered why he should. What was wrong with letting them be helpful? “Thank you,” he said quietly. “The, uh, the earplugs would probably just make it worse, but…thank you.”

Now Maeva withdrew a plastic bag of burritos from the bag. “Do you want these? We can eat them if you don’t, but I thought…”

“No, thank you. They really do smell delicious.” Swallowing the pills dry, he accepted the burritos, cradling them awkwardly with one arm. The heat spread through the foil and his suit to warm his skin.

“Are you sure you don’t want the gavel?” Ella asked slyly, like she already knew his answer would be yes.

He smiled a little in sheer disbelief at himself even as he adjusted his grip on his cane so he could also accept the gavel.

“Matt?” Micah said. “A moment?”

“Uh, yeah, sure.” Matt let Micah lead him a few paces away, ignoring Ella asking what was going on. “What is it?”

Micah kept his voice low. “I told you Ella’s been obsessed with courtrooms,” he began.

And Foggy would be thrilled to hear it. _I always said she should be a lawyer,_ he’d say, despite never having said it out loud.

“The truth is, she wants to help you.”

“She doesn’t have to,” Matt said immediately. “It’s not her fault that I’m on trial.”

“She’s not doing this out of guilt,” Micah corrected. “You mean a lot to her, Matt. Of _course_ she wants to help.”

“And by help, you mean…?”

“Testify.”

Matt grimaced. “I’m sorry. I was explaining what’s going on, and she got…excited. I should’ve told you, I was just…”

Distracted.

“It’s fine,” Micah said. “She told me herself right away. I just wanted to ask if you think that’s a good idea.”

“No.”

Micah chuckled quietly. “Do you ever think _anything_ is a good idea?”

That was rich coming from the man who’d had a problem with teaching Frank parkour. “Listen, Micah. This trial is public. Everyone who takes the stand in my defense becomes affiliated with me.”

“She’s already affiliated with you,” he cut in sharply.

But this was _worse_. “It’s bad enough that she’s someone I’ve rescued, but testifying would mean she’s _defending_ me. Even if Fisk can’t get to her himself, what do you think’ll happen when the random criminals in Hell’s Kitchen hear about it?”

Micah folded his arms across his chest. “All right, you’ve made a strong case why it would be bad for her sake for her to testify, but maybe we can deal with that. Is there any reason why her testimony would be bad for _your_ sake? Or would she actually be helpful?”

Matt ignored his own accelerating heartbeat. “She’s—she’s _seven_ , Micah. And—and she knows a lot of really incriminating things.”

“Such as? I thought you weren’t pretending you’re not Daredevil?”

“What I did to her dad, for one,” Matt snapped.

“That was an accident and everyone knows it,” Micah snapped back. “You’ve got to forgive yourself for that.”

Time to hide behind legalese. “Child witnesses are incredibly complicated. There’s a lot of extra steps required before their testimony is even _admissible_ , let alone credible.” He started talking faster. “And the jury will have already heard from Karen and Claire, so Ella’s testimony is redundant and Tower will fight tooth and nail to keep it out and the judge will probably agree and then Ella will just feel worse and the jury will be confused, and…” He trailed off and shook his head. “It won’t help.”

Micah was silent for a moment. “It won’t help,” he repeated at last, questioningly, like he thought Matt might’ve already changed his mind.

“It won’t,” Matt said firmly. “So…so it’s not worth trying.”

“All right,” Micah sighed. “I’ll break the news to her and…see if Maeva and I can come up with some other way for her to feel helpful.”

Matt tightened his grip on his cane. It probably wasn’t supposed to be a guilt trip. But it sure felt like one.

 

Marci

Marci was pleased with the chicken burritos but dismissive over the gavel, which Matt tucked securely into his satchel like a good luck token.

“You’re ridiculous,” she said.

“You’re jealous,” he retorted.

She didn’t dignify that with a response. She did, however, give him strict instructions not to make his way over to where Karen was sitting behind Tower’s table. The two of them needed to appear completely professional and Karen in particular needed to come across as purely objective. Marci updated her notes for the closing argument and tried to ignore the yearning, apologetic looks Karen kept casting towards Matt while he vibrated nervous energy in the other seat at the defense table.

He needed to lay off the caffeine. He was clearly stressed enough already, and it only got worse when Lauria returned to the courtroom. The judge barely waited for everyone to sit down before asking if Tower was ready to call his next witness. When Tower said Karen’s name, every single member of the jury leaned forward. And as soon as Karen stood up, Matt’s entire body tensed.

“Relax, guard dog,” Marci whispered as Karen made her way to the stand. She was dressed well, although her white shirt was a bit tight, highlighting the faint curve of her belly for anyone who cared to look. “She knows what she’s doing.”

“I know,” he whispered back, sounding absolutely certain and completely terrified at the same time.

Unlike with Detective Mahoney, it was clear from Tower’s posture that he also knew exactly what he was getting into. He’d want to get Karen off the stand as quickly as possible without _looking_ like he was trying to get her off the stand as quickly as possible. “Mrs. Murdock,” he began, “how do you know the defendant?”

“He’s a lawyer. And my husband.”

“Can you identify the defendant in court today by an article of clothing?”

Karen pointed. “That’s him with the cane. And the red glasses. He’s blind. Completely. No light perception at all.”

Tower swept on, unfazed. “How did you meet the defendant?”

“I met him in a jail cell after I was falsely accused of a crime. He and his partner, Franklin Nelson, represented me. After that, I started working with them.”

“How long did you work with them?”

“About two years. The firm temporarily dissolved and I went to work for the Bulletin as a reporter. Now I’m working with them again.”

“Did you ever write articles while you were at the Bulletin?”

“Yes.”

“What kinds of articles did you write?”

She shrugged, not willing to play along too nicely. “All kinds.”

“Did you ever write any about Daredevil?”

“Yes. Several.”

“What kind of research did you do to qualify you to write those articles?”

A sly smile curved her lips. “Over about a year, I interviewed hundreds of citizens of Hell’s Kitchen who’ve been rescued by Daredevil, or who had someone close to them who was rescued by Daredevil. They all told me how he’d hear their screams no matter where they were and find them, make sure they were safe, before disappearing to save the next person.”

“Thank you,” Tower said a bit curtly, _almost_ cutting her off but not quite. “Now, Mrs. Murdock, when did you first meet Daredevil in the mask?”

He probably wanted to establish Karen’s credibility regarding Daredevil and use her interactions with him to build anticipation for the reveal, but Karen beat him to it. “Well, Daredevil is actually my husband, so technically, I first met Daredevil when I was in jail.”

Regardless, Tower’s point had been made. “How do you know that Daredevil is your husband?”

Karen turned her head to look at the jury, her eyes somehow simultaneously challenging and impleading. “He told me.”

Tower stepped slightly to the side. “I’d like to clarify for the jury your reasons for testifying today. Are you testifying for the State or for the defendant?”

“For the State,” Karen answered cautiously.

“And why is that?”

Karen shot a look at Marci, who kept her face neutral. Anything said in a plea negotiation was generally held inadmissible to protect the sanctity of those negotiations—but only when the defendant made the plea. And Karen was no longer the defendant. Marci could try to make a 403 argument—but Karen’s bias in this case was hugely probative and even Marci didn’t think it was substantially outweighed by potential prejudice.

So Marci just raised her eyebrows and nodded slightly in Tower’s direction.

“I, um…I took a plea,” Karen said in a small voice. “I got lower charges in exchange for, um, for agreeing to testify that Matt is Daredevil.”

“Thank you.” Tower cleared his throat. “Now, returning to that conversation when the defendant told you that he was Daredevil…when was this?”

“Around Christmas a year and a half ago.”

“Where did this conversation take place?”

“It wasn’t much of a conversation, but it was at our old office.”

Tower stepped forward. “Who, exactly, was present?”

“Just the two of us,” she said more quietly, glancing across at Matt.

“And what, to the best of your knowledge, was said?”

“He was the one who’d asked to meet me, so I asked what I was doing there. He said he had something he needed me to see. Then…” The weight of the moment seemed to settle over her, but a small smile curved her lips at the memory. “He told me who he was.”

“And that convinced you?”

She looked directly at the jury. “He showed me his mask.”

“Can you describe the mask?”

“The red one. With the horns.”

Tower let out a slow breath of relief. “Thank you, Your Honor. No further questions.”

Karen set her shoulders back, looking equally relieved.

Marci nudged Matt. “See? No need to panic.”

He shot her a dirty look behind his sunglasses.

Loftily ignoring him, she stood up and, with Lauria’s permission, took her position in the well. Normally, when crossing an adverse witness, she’d stand on the opposite side of the well from the jury so witnesses had to swivel their heads back and forth between Marci and the jury, which felt uncomfortable and looked dishonest. Today, however, Marci stood close to the jury box so Karen could easily give her answer to the jury.

“Hello, Mrs. Murdock,” Marci began politely. “To follow up on Mr. Tower’s question, when _was_ the first time that you met Daredevil when he was actually wearing a mask?”

“I was trying to recover information I’d hidden at my apartment during the Union Allied scandal, but Wilson Fisk sent an assassin to kill me.”

“And then what happened, Mrs. Murdock?”

“Daredevil showed up. Well.” Even now, her eyes lit up with admiration. “The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen showed up. He defeated Fisk’s assassin, recovered the information, and delivered it all to the Bulletin.”

“And then you interacted with Daredevil again in the armored suit?”

“Yes. Again, he saved me. From, um…from ninjas, that time.”

A few members of the jury scooted forward in their chairs.

“Ninjas?” Marci echoed.

“They had masks and swords, so…yeah, ninjas. They filled a bus with people Daredevil had rescued before, trying to draw him in.” She paused. “It worked. That kind of trap _always_ works. If he knows people are in danger, he can’t help himself.”

“Objection!” Tower was on his feet. “Speculation, Your Honor. This witness has no idea what motivated Daredevil to find the individuals on that bus.”

Lauria sustained the objection. “Keep your opinions to yourself, Mrs. Murdock,” she warned.

Karen just flashed an innocent smile.

Marci cleared her throat, recapturing the jury’s attention. “And didn’t you interact with Daredevil more recently, after he started operating in the black costume again?”

“Yes.” Karen offered the jury a smile. “He rescued me after Benjamin Poindexter escaped prison and attacked me in my apartment.”

“To clarify, Mrs. Murdock, you’ve interacted with Daredevil in all three of his masks. Is that correct?”

A strand of hair fell lose from her sleek ponytail; she tucked it back behind her ear. “That’s correct.”

“And on all of those occasions, he’s been…?”

“Saving me.” Karen glanced back at the jury. “Which isn’t to say I haven’t had to save him. From, you know, fighting with the dishwasher. Or angry cats. Cats hate him, and the feeling is mutual.”

Tower was on his feet again. “Objection, Your Honor. Relevance?”

“Credibility,” Marci countered fluidly. “I’m establishing the extent of Mrs. Murdock’s relationship with Mr. Murdock.” Lauria overruled Tower’s objection and Marci decided to test how much leash she’d been given. “How long have you and Mr. Murdock been married?”

“Only a few months, but we’ve known each other for years now.”

“At what point in your relationship did Mr. Murdock tell you he was Daredevil?”

They hadn’t practiced those questions, and Karen looked taken aback for a second. Well, Marci could apologize later.

“We, um…” Karen lifted her hand as if to tuck her hair behind her ears, but her hair was tied back, so she let the hand fall back onto her lap. “We’d broken up, actually. I knew he was keeping secrets, and…” Her eyes darted towards Matt. “I couldn’t handle being in a relationship with that much dishonesty. We didn’t get back together until after he’d told me the truth.”

“So it bothered you, the fact that he was Daredevil.”

“No. The fact that he’s Daredevil doesn’t bother me.” She raised her voice a little. “I’ve always thought this city needs heroes like him.”

Tower stood up again, sounding exasperated. “Your Honor, relevance. Mrs. Murdock’s opinion of Daredevil as a figure has no bearing on the crimes the defendant is on trial for today.”

“Agreed,” Lauria said crisply. “Move along, counsel.”

“Of course, Your Honor.” Marci pivoted smoothly. “On the three occasions when Daredevil saved you, you never called the police.”

“Because I was facing an _immediate threat_ _to my life_.”

“To your life, Mrs. Murdock?”

“Yes,” Karen insisted. “The man who first attacked me in my apartment was an assassin working for Fisk. The ninjas had literal swords. And the man who attacked me in my apartment a second time was Benjamin Poindexter. I feared for my life.”

“So are you saying that, without Daredevil’s intervention, you would have lost your life?”

“Yes,” Karen said clearly. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“And did you, on any of these three occasions, witness the end of the fight?”

“Yes. Twice.”

“Can you tell the jury about the first time?”

Karen nodded. “It was after the assassin broke into my apartment. Matt decided, for whatever reason, that the best thing to do was to throw himself and the assassin bodily out the window. Maybe to keep the fight away from me? I don’t know. My apartment was on the second floor, so I guess they landed okay. By the time I got out there, Matt had tied the assassin up with a chain. The guy was unconscious. Matt got what we needed—a flashdrive—and dropped the guy off at the Bulletin.”

“Did you witness Mr. Murdock dropping the assassin off at the Bulletin?”

“No, but I was following the story. For obvious reasons.”

“When you saw the assassin tied up with the chain, you didn’t observe any broken bones, did you?”

“I’m not a doctor, but…no. He just looked unconscious.”

“All right. Can you tell us about the second time you witnessed the fight end?”

“That was when Benjamin Poindexter broke into my apartment. Again, Matt knocked him unconscious. I was also, um, hurt again, and Matt was paying more attention to me. Once Poindexter woke up, Matt didn’t even stop him from escaping.”

“Thank you.” Marci stepped back. “Nothing further for this witness.”

“Redirect?” Lauria asked as Marci made her way back to her seat.

“Yes, Your Honor.” Tower was already moving back into the well.

Matt tensed up again.

“Heel, boy,” Marci whispered.

He glared through his glasses.

“Mrs. Murdock,” Tower said. “You just testified that you failed to call the police because whatever threats you may have faced were too immediate. But have you ever rejected police protection even when it’s offered?”

Marci leaned towards Matt. “What’s he talking about?”

Karen hesitated. “Um.”

Matt was clenching his hands under the table.

“I’m not sure what you’re referring to,” Karen said at last.

Tower didn’t miss a beat. “That’s fine, we’ll walk through it together. Do you remember the murders that followed the Frank Castle case?”

Karen stiffened. “Samantha Reyes, Gregory Tepper…”

“Were you ever attacked?”

“Um. My—my apartment. Someone shot up my apartment.”

“What do you mean, _shot up?_ ”

She narrowed her eyes. “I mean there were bullet holes across an entire wall.”

Tower nodded once. “After this shooting at your apartment, did anyone offer to protect you?”

Her voice hardened. “Yes. The NYPD.”

“And about how long did you stay with the officers assigned to you for your protection?”

Karen pursed her lips. “Just long enough for them to take me to a hotel.”

“And then you…?”

“Left.”

“Did you tell the officers that you were leaving?”

“No.”

“Did you tell the officers where you were going?”

“No.”

“Did you do _anything_ to give them the chance to keep you safe?”

“No.”

Tower nodded, satisfied. “Now, you also mentioned earlier that you’re testifying today because of a plea deal. Just to clarify: would you have testified that the defendant is Daredevil if it weren’t for that plea deal?”

She took a deep breath. “Probably not. He’s my husband.”

“I understand,” Tower said, faux sympathy leaking into his tone. Marci couldn’t see his expression, but she bet it was smug. He bobbed his head towards Lauria. “Thank you. Your Honor, the witness—”

“And now we’re pregnant,” Karen interrupted.

Tower froze.

Matt froze.

The jaws of the jury members dropped.

The comment was blatantly prejudicial in Matt’s favor, but Tower wouldn’t want the jury to think of him as the attorney who tried to strike the mention of an unborn child. Instead, Tower offered a meager shrug, clearly trying to act like nothing important just happened. “Thank you, Mrs. Murdock. Your Honor, the witness may step down. The, uh, the prosecution rests, Your Honor.”

 

Matt

As soon as court was let out, the overlapping voices echoed around him, threatening to restart his headache. Some were talking about the pregnancy (“Think she’s really pregnant?” “What happens if he goes to jail?” “Is the super-hearing genetic?”) but others were more concerned about Karen’s history.

“She killed Vanessa Fisk, right? And that Wesley guy? Is that what the plea deal was about?”

“How come she’s not in jail? She should be in jail.”

“She killed two people!”

“So she’s only testifying to get off a murder charge? Sheesh.”

“If I were Murdock, I never would’ve agreed to this.”

He fervently hoped Karen couldn’t hear any of these conversations.

He noticed her coming towards him a few minutes later, slipping past other personnel. Her short heals clacked on the tile, hair swishing where she’d tied it back so she wouldn’t be tempted to fiddle with it on the stand. Between all of that and the way her scent kept subtly changing…she was so beautiful, and such a haven for his senses that the rest of the courthouse disappeared as she fell against him, breathless.

“I’m so sorry, Matt, I’m so—”

“Hey, no, shh. You did great.” Tilting his head, he lifted her chin. “Seriously. Did Tower know you were gonna mention the baby?” He let his other hand drift down to her belly, feeling how her shirt clung to the extra roundness there. Her motivation was all wrong, but he still felt a little dizzy over the fact that she’d dressed specifically to show off the pregnancy.

“I’m still sorry. Now there’s no chance anymore of pretending you’re not—”

“We weren’t gonna do that anyway. You know that.”

“I just… _damnit_.”

“What?” he asked gently.

She pressed her forehead against his shoulder. “Your _identity_. I know you and Marci have a plan for this, but everyone’s gonna know who you are. Even if you win, even if you’re not sentenced…” She took a deep breath. “You won’t be able to go to the _store_ without people stopping you. You’ll never be able to just…be.”

“I don’t care.”

“Ugh. Matt.”

He should probably stop saying stuff like that when it was so obviously untrue. “I mean, it’s worth it. It’s all worth it as long as I get to keep you.”

“I’m still—I wish I could say how sorry I am. If I’d just left Vanessa alone—”

“And let her keep hurting people?”

She didn’t respond.

“Hey,” Matt said, smiling softly. “I have a way you can make it up to me.” Catching her wrist, he pulled her down the hall where he could hear less voices and footsteps and people coughing echoing off the walls until they reached an empty corridor. He found a nook in the wall and pressed her into it, dedicating himself to kissing her until she forgot everything that worried her.

But she put a hand on his chest. “Matt. We’re in a _courthouse_ , this isn’t appropriate.”

“No one’s watching,” he murmured, kissing the objection off her mouth.

She returned the kiss only for a moment before trying to pull away. Since she was pushed back against a wall, that didn’t work so well. Finally, she planted both hands on his chest. “ _Matt_. Seriously. What’s going on?”

She couldn’t hear his heartbeat speeding up in his ears. “Nothing. I’m just thanking you for all those nice things you said earlier.”

Suspicion laced her voice. “I thought I was making it up to you for saying all the not-so-nice things.”

“Both. Stop cross-examining me.” He leaned in again, this time opting to kiss along her jaw while he slid his other hand over her shoulder to massage the back of her neck. She was still stiff, like she couldn’t quite relax from the pressure of being on the stand. At his touch, she melted against him and her suspicions apparently dissipated.

But kissing her wasn’t as sweet as it should’ve been when his stomach was shriveled with guilt. After all, they’d agreed to confront things together; it had even been _his_ idea. But he couldn’t tell her that he wasn’t sure when she’d see him again or else she’d ask questions and probably call in Marci (maybe even Maggie and Jessica) to stop him.

So he simply had to say goodbye without words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> General shoutout to Heisey, again, for sharing expertise. In fact, that generally goes for the whole legal plotline here. (Although any mistakes are mine, either willfully or via creative license.)
> 
> I also wanted to thank y'all, as always, for your incredible comments, and especially your ideas, feelings, and questions about how the trial is progressing. It gives me an idea of what a hypothetical jury might be thinking and has already inspired a few twists!
> 
> (And I'm so sorry but Matt hasn't been an idiot in a while and he's overdue.)


	35. Our Crooked Smiles have Disappeared

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Citadel" by Write This Down (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8UPgTOUYiQ) which is a GORGEOUS song imo.

Micah

Ella chattered nonstop about going to the courthouse even after the got back home, prompting Micah to run through the logistics of taking her back to observe a different case—one where the stakes were lower and less personal. Of course, she’d been saying she wanted to be a therapist for the past month or so, and before that she wanted to be an engineer or a teacher, so he didn’t expect this phase to last long. He did, however, want to encourage her however he could.

“Daddy,” she said, following him into the living room with her hands clasped behind her back, “did you talk to Matt?”

“We all talked to Matt, buttercup.”

“I mean, did you talk to him about _me?_ What’d he say?”

Right. Sitting on the couch, Micah patted the seat next to him and Ella instantly hopped up, resting her head on her shoulder like she’d been drawn by a magnet. It still caught him off guard, sometimes: these casual moments of easy affection, like she’d lived with him her entire life and never known anything but love and protection.

“He, uh, he didn’t think it was a great idea.”

She sat back up, forehead creased in confusion. “Why not?”

“Well,” Micah began, picking his words carefully, “he said it might be dangerous for you. He also mentioned that it might be…complicated…for you to share your story.”

“How come?”

“I don’t know, I’m not a lawyer.”

“Huh.” She slumped back against the couch. “He didn’t say any of that when _I_ talked to him.”

Probably because Ella’s determined voice was just as irresistible as her puppy dog eyes.

“Well,” she said suddenly, “you probably shouldn’t’ve asked Matt.”

“I thought that was the plan?”

She was still frowning, but now she appeared to be solving a puzzle. “Yeah, but it makes sense that he’d say no. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea.”

That was exactly what that meant. “Why does it make sense that he’d say no?”

Her frown deepened. “It just does,” she said finally. “He doesn’t like people helping him.”

Normally, Micah would agree with her. However. “He took the ibuprofen your mom gave him, remember? And the chicken burritos.”

“Daddy,” she said patiently, like he was being obtuse, “that’s _different_.”

“How?”

“It just _is_. Can’t we talk to…um…the other…”

“Marci?” Maeva supplied, leaning against the doorway with her arms folded, looking amused.

“Yeah!” Ella said excitedly. “Her!”

They’d only met once, at Matt and Karen’s wedding, and Ella had obviously been terrified of Marci. It was Micah’s turn to frown. “You wanna talk to Marci,” he repeated skeptically.

Ella gave a determined nod.

“Ella…”

“What could it hurt?” Maeva pointed out, raising her eyebrows at Micah to communicate that he’d better agree with this.

To be fair, they _were_ trying to help Ella pursue other routes of helping people besides getting into fights, and they were both realizing that teaching her to bake people cookies was just not going to cut it, not when she started so many of her fights in response to injustice. And helping Matt would fight a terrible injustice.

As long as she wasn’t too disappointed when it didn’t work.

 

Matt

It was hard to get time alone these days. Except at night.

As Matt snuck into Foggy’s room at the hospital, he couldn’t help wondering where he should put “breaking into hospitals” on his résumé if he needed to update it after the trial ended. Stone would probably have ideas.

Foggy’s room wasn’t quiet. Not to him at least. The machines were too loud, loud enough that it really didn’t make sense that Foggy wasn’t awake. But at least Foggy hadn’t had to review exhibit after exhibit of all the harm Matt inflicted. Karen seemed to have let the whole torturing thing go for now, probably choosing her battles or possibly even thinking it wouldn’t be an issue, that he wouldn’t be _able_ to torture people because he’d be in jail or walking around with an ankle monitor or something. So.

Shoving those thoughts from his mind, Matt drifted up to the edge of Foggy’s bed. “Hey,” he said softly, and listened.

No change in breathing. No change in heartbeat. No twitch.

“I’ve missed you,” Matt said, which wasn’t what he’d intended to say, but it was true and Fogy deserved to hear it if any part of him could. “I just came to say that I’m gonna go…well, I’m gonna go be me.” Then Matt let his imagination fill in Foggy’s likely responses:

_You say that, but all I hear is “I’m gonna go be stupid.”_

_Because of course punching people in the face is the best way to stay out of jail._

_What about, just for once, you call the Avengers instead?_

_Just…be careful, buddy._

“It’s for Karen, Fogs. You understand that.” She’d met the bare minimum of her requirements under her plea deal, but there was no way she’d satisfied the expectations of the prosecutors who were somehow connected to Felix Manning.

 _Does she know about this?_ Foggy would ask. _Because telling me doesn’t really satisfy the Bad Decision Spectrum when I’m literally in a coma._

“I never stipulated to that,” Matt whispered. “I’m just saying I might not, uh…I might not be able to visit you again for a while. If things go wrong tonight.” He ghosted one hand over Foggy’s arm. “So, you know, I also…I just wanted to say that, um…” His throat was tightening. Shit. Biting his lower lip, he breathed through his nose until he was confident he could speak without his voice shaking if he just said it quickly enough. “I love you, Foggy. That’s all.”

Then he hastily backed up and didn’t really breathe until he was standing in the hallway with Foggy’s door shut between them.

 

According to Matt’s research, Felix Manning had been brought in shortly after Fisk’s arrest and was spat back out of the system a few days later. Matt’s first thought was to reach out to Brett for this next step, except Brett was a bit too…connected. Liable to betray Matt to Marci or even Karen. But Brett was no longer Matt’s only friend on the force.

“Mr. Murdock!” Officer Robinson sounded surprised and excited at the same time when he took Matt’s call. “What can I do for you?”

“Felix Manning,” Matt said immediately. “Known to the criminal underworld as the Fixer. He worked closely with Wilson Fisk’s previous lawyer, Donovan, to facilitate Fisk’s crimes. What happened to him?”

“Hold on…” There was muffled clicking on the other end of the line. “I, uh…I don’t have access to all of his file, but he was released from custody. Took a plea, spent a few nights in jail, and that’s it.”

Matt gripped the phone tighter, swearing quietly. “So he’s just out free.”

“Don’t you do defense work?” Robinson pointed out.

“Among other things,” Matt muttered, “as my case has made pretty clear.”

“Yeah, about that,” Robinson began.

“Can you get me his address?” Matt interrupted.

Hesitation. Understandable. “If you give me a reason, maybe.”

Matt tightened his grip on his phone. “The Fixer runs his criminal operations through blackmail. As long as he has access to a phone or a computer, he’s a threat.”

“It’s not my fault they let him go,” Robinson protested.

“No, but the prosecutors who negotiated his plea deal are the same ones currently using the Fixer’s knowledge to threaten people.”

Robinson lowered his voice. “To clarify—the guy’s a bad guy?”

“Yes, Officer.”

“And you can’t just charge the prosecutors with misconduct?”

“That would…take too long,” Matt said cautiously.

 “And if _someone_ doesn’t stop him, he might cause more problems for the citizens of Hell’s Kitchen?”

“Almost certainly.”

Robinson waited a moment as if gathering his courage. “All right. I'll get you the address. But listen, Mr. Murdock, if you find him…leave some pieces for us, will you?”

Matt bit the inside of his cheek to keep his smirk out of his voice. “Understood, Officer.”

He hung up before Robinson could ask any more questions.

 

His fingers itched to bring a knife. After all, this was personal.

But he wouldn’t need a knife to subdue someone like Felix. Besides that, he felt the anger humming through his veins, telling him that bringing a knife was a very, very bad idea.

After all. This was personal.

Thanks to Robinson’s help, Matt ended up standing outside an elegant house much like the one where Matt had dealt with Lopez. The similarities were impossible to ignore—except that instead of doing what he had to do for Foggy’s sake, he was gonna do this for Karen.

Who wouldn’t be happy about it either. He was so used to Karen having his back even through his more questionable choices that it felt strangely lonely to know she’d think he was going too far tonight.

The house was quiet. Only two heartbeats: Felix’s, and…a dog’s. Huh. Matt would’ve expected Felix to be the kind of guy to keep a snake as a pet, or maybe a cat.

Well, Matt wasn’t gonna complain about a dog.

He went in through a kitchen window. It was locked, but the window was old enough that it was easy to manipulate.  And whatever alarm Felix had wasn’t set over the kitchen windows. To make things even better, Felix kept the dog’s treats in a box in the pantry, so Matt was ready with a handful of strong-smelling snacks by the time the dog came trundling down the stairs, huffing suspiciously.

“Hey, girl,” Mat said softly, listening to the heavy paws plodding into the kitchen. Whatever kind of dog she was, she was big. About a hundred and ten pounds, give or take. But not hostile, not yet. Crouching low, Matt held out the treats. The dog regarded him for about five seconds; then Matt felt a wet nose bump against his fingers. A whiskered muzzle filled his palm as the dog lapped up the treats like candy.

“Atta girl,” Matt whispered. Once the dog devoured the treats, Matt used the same hand she was already familiar with to scratch behind her ears.

Then Matt slowly, slowly straightened up.

So far, so good.

The dog stayed at Matt’s side as he began making his way towards the stairs (after grabbing another handful of treats, just to be safe).

Then Matt set foot on the first step of the stairs.

He heard the snarl build in the dog’s chest, heard her weight shift, and that was all the warning he got before the dog lunged, jaws snapping at Matt’s face. He threw up an arm, felt teeth sink deep into four distinct points of his flesh. He brought up his knee, catching the dog in the chest and throwing her backwards. The canines tore out of Matt’s arm, scattering blood and bits of skin everywhere.

Great, just great. That was a lot of DNA. Good amount of pain, too. The dog whimpered when she hit the railing of the stairs, but the whimper turned into a full-throated growl as she heaved herself back to her paws.

Swearing, Matt sprinted up the stairs just in time for Felix’s bedroom door to crack open. Matt crashed straight into Felix, one hand around his throat, and slammed the door shut behind him in the dog’s face. Huge paws thudded against the door, claws scraping into the solid oak.

Felix dropped something on the floor. A phone? His Adam’s apple bobbed under Matt’s hand.

“I’m not in the mood to play around.” Matt tightened his grip. “You’re trying to use Karen’s history in Vermont as leverage. I need you to tell me you’ll stop.”

Wrapping his spindly hands around Matt’s wrist, Felix gasped for breath.

Matt relaxed his grip ever so slightly. “Say the words.”

“I’ll stop, I’ll stop!”

Lie. Matt released Felix’s throat long enough for him to suck in a grateful breath. Then Matt broke his arm in two. “I told you, I’m not playing.”

Felix _wailed_.

“Tell me you’ll stop.”

“I don’t know what you’re—”

Matt slid his hand down to an unbroken part of the arm and snapped in a second place, hard enough for the bone to cut through the skin. “Say it.”

“I’ll stop!” Felix screamed. The dog howled.

But his heart was racing so fast that Matt could no longer tell the difference between a truth and a lie. “I need you to calm down right now,” he murmured, “or things are gonna get very bad for you.”

Felix was about two seconds away from hyperventilating.

Matt pulled his hands back. “Take some deep breaths. I’ll give you five seconds.”

“I—I—I’m not even working with Fisk anymore—”

It was such an obvious lie, and _why_ was he still refusing to cooperate? It occurred to Mat that maybe Fisk had so secured Felix’s loyalties that Felix would _never_ stop.

Matt grabbed the front of Felix’s shirt, spun him around, and slammed him back against the door hard enough for the door to shake. The dog’s claws cut into the door, filling the air with the scent of old wood.

Felix let out a strangled cough, lungs rattling.

Matt leaned in closer. Was that…blood on his breath? Or just in the air? “I’m trying to keep this simple for you. I need you to leave Karen alone. It’s in your best interest to _convince_ me you agree.”

“I’ll leave her alone, I swear. Don’t kill me, please—”

Matt focused. He was almost certain Felix was telling the truth now, with no plans to renege later. But Matt had no reason to believe Felix wouldn’t flip the next time Fisk threatened him or bribed him or did whatever Fisk did to buy Felix in the first place. And, sure, Fisk was losing access to all his leverage. But this was Karen.

Matt couldn’t afford to take chances.

“Do you know how easy it was to find you?” Matt breathed. “Do you know how easy it’ll be to find you again?”

Felix nodded frantically.

“Now, before I let you go,” Matt said, clenching his jaw, “I need you to show me your files on Karen.”

“They’re—they’re on my computer.”

“Show me.”

“But you’re—” Felix wisely cut himself off.

Felix knew Matt was blind. But he also knew Matt could tell when he was lying. Matt could only hope it would balance out.

Felix limped across the room to a sleek laptop on a desk, still wheezing. The laptop was almost silent, for a machine, when it turned on. Then Matt heard a few _clicks_ of a mouse.

“Here,” Felix said shakily.

It didn’t sound like he was lying, although Matt had to swallow his own fury at his inability to verify despite the fact that he was focusing all his senses on Felix and the computer. “Is it a file on your computer, or is it in the cloud somewhere?”

“A local file,” Felix muttered, in a voice that suggested he wanted to make clear that he wasn’t an idiot but he also didn’t want to undergo further bodily injury.

“Delete it. And any backup copies.”

 _Click_ , _click_.

“Is it done?” Matt demanded.

“Done. It’s done.”

Truth. Matt unclenched his hand from Felix’s shoulder.  “Now, listen to me very—” He broke off at the sound of two vehicles pulling up outside, the rumble of motors grabbing his attention. “Were you expecting company?”

Felix’s pulse skyrocketed.

There was the faintest sound of firearms cocking outside, followed by a sharp knock on the front door. “NYPD!” someone yelled. “Identify yourself!”

Matt spun around and raced from the room, stumbling down the stairs. The dog was going crazy at the front door, hich was suddenly kicked in, followed by a piercing sound that shot straight into Matt’s skull. He felt more than heard the dog fleeing the sound, but Matt froze despite the stabbing pain in his head. He recognized Robinson’s scent and he didn’t need enhanced senses to know there were three guns pointed at him.

He raised his hands behind his head.

The officers were saying something, he could tell by a lower-pitched rumble, but he couldn’t make out the words over that awful sound. He gestured helplessly at his ears.

The sound shut off and Matt almost staggered with relief. He heard one of the officers’ question over the ringing in his ears: “Where’s Felix Manning?”

Matt’s throat moved before he mentally worked through the question. “Upstairs.”

The same officer split off from the rest; Robinson and the third approached slowly, carefully, with their guns still raised. “Sir,” the third said, “remove the mask and then stand still with your hands above your head. Don’t make this worse for yourself.”

Been there, done that. Matt’s heart pounded as he pulled off the mask and the cops locked handcuffs around his wrists behind his back.

“Mr. Murdock,” the officer said, coming around to stand in front of him. Matt aimed his eyes at the floor. “I assume you know your rights, but let me be clear.” Thus began one of the slowest, most precise recitations of the Miranda rights Matt had ever heard. Well, Matt couldn’t really blame them for making sure they stuck to procedure when they knew they were arresting a defense attorney. It was just frustrating while his bitten arm throbbed in time with his pulse and his head ached and his stomach churned.

Robinson wrapped a bandage around his arm before leading they led him out to one of the patrol cars. Only once Matt was secured in the backseat did Robinson say, “I’ll take it from here.”

The other officer nodded and hurried back into the house, maybe to help with Felix or maybe to collect evidence. Matt didn’t know and he didn’t care.

Robinson slid into the front seat of the vehicle and sighed.

Matt leaned back against the headrest. “Gotta admit, I didn’t see this coming.” Robinson had sounded so sincere on the phone.

The young officer shifted uncomfortably. “I didn’t tell them. Manning called about a home invasion. Officers were on their way out here anyway.”

“Did you tell them it was me?” Not that it made a difference at this point.

“Of course not!” Robinson sounded almost indignant at the accusation.

“Then why weren’t there sirens?”

“Standard operating procedure,” Robinson explained ruefully. “No sirens for home invasions so we don’t scare off the perp.” He lowered his voice to a fierce whisper. “You couldn’t have let us handle it?”

Matt closed his eyes. “I told you. It was urgent.”

“I’m sorry about this, Mr. Murdock. I really am.”

“Yeah,” Matt said tiredly. “I know.”

 

Karen

“I raise,” Karen said smugly, sliding a few more chips onto the table. The poker set used to belong to Kevin.

A crease appeared between Frank’s eyebrows as he looked at her, then at the chips, then at his own cards, then back at her. Swearing gruffly, he slapped his cards on the table. “Fold.”

“Thanks,” she chirped, pulling the chips towards herself.

“What’d you have?”

“Nope. Not telling.” She didn’t need him to know just how much she’d been bluffing.

He glared. Frank Castle, she decided, was not used to losing.

Karen’s phone started ringing; Marci’s number flashed across the screen. “Oh, I’ve gotta take this. Reshuffle, will you? _Don’t_ look at my cards.”

Frank scowled. “So you _were_ bluffing?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.” Stepping away, she pressed the phone to her ear. “Hi, Marci. Is something wrong?”

“I can’t see you,” Marci said tensely, “but I hope you’re not asking that with a straight face.”

Karen’s jolted into high alert. “What happened?”

“ _Yes_ , something’s wrong, assuming you think that your husband getting thrown in jail for violating the terms of his probation is a problem.”

Her mouth fell open. “He did what?”

“Criminal defendants are usually pretty stupid, you know? But Matt got a higher GPA than Foggy so I—stupidly, obviously—assumed he’d be less idiotic.” She sighed, a burst of static in Karen’s ear. “Sorry, that’s not helpful. I swear I’m a professional, I just…this case, damnit.”

Frank came up behind Karen, laying one hand on her shoulder. She twisted to grip the hand in hers. “Marci, what did he actually _do?_ ”

“What do you _think_ he did? He beat someone up.”

“Who?”

A tense pause.

“If you’re gonna call and tell me Matt got thrown in jail, you’d better give me the whole story,” Karen growled.

Pissing Marci off was a bad idea, Karen remembered too late. “My client is Matt, not you. I don’t owe you his secrets.”

Cussing Marci out was a worse idea. Karen temporarily lowered the phone so the lawyer wouldn’t hear the deep breath she took. “Marci,” she said slowly. Calmly. Almost timidly, because Marci liked to be the scariest person in the room. “Please. I don’t have many people on my side right now.”

Another sigh, although this one was softer. Resigned, with the slightest hint of reluctant approval. It actually sounded like Foggy always did when Matt did something particularly heroic and particularly stupid. “That guy who was threatening you. Felix Manning.”

“But we didn’t tell him about the threats!”

“Not the specific threats about your performance as a witness,” Marci admitted, and she sounded almost _apologetic_. “But I told him that Manning was, you know, causing problems.”

Karen groaned. “ _Why_ would you tell him that?”

“He’s my client!”

“What _exactly_ did he do?”

“I don’t know, but Manning was found with an arm broken in two different places, bruising around the neck, and a busted windpipe. The guy’s old as balls, so he didn’t really take it well.”

Karen tasted bile in the back of her throat. There was no way all that had been necessary. “Okay. Okay. You’re gonna help him, right?”

“I’m gonna try,” Marci said darkly. “I just needed to tell you.”

She hung up.

Frank immediately drew Karen closer, letting her lean against him while she caught her breath.

Matt had promised he wasn’t gonna do that anymore.

Well, she hadn’t really believed him anyway.

 

Foggy

Nothing was real.

Half the time he felt like he was in a waiting room. Didn’t know who he was waiting for, though. God? Half the time it felt like he was strapped on an exam table being prodded by aliens. Maybe he’d been abducted. Maybe he was waiting on the Avengers to come save him.

Sometimes he was aware of voices. Sometimes he recognized the voices, sometimes he didn’t.

People poked around his body. Putting stuff in, taking stuff out. Cleaning him. It felt wrong, but he couldn’t tell them to stop, couldn’t push their hands off him, couldn’t run away.

If this was a dream, he wanted to wake up.

 

He couldn’t explain what changed. He started hearing more things, and sometimes the things almost made sense. He was able to actually think about the things independent from just hearing them, which was new and fun. And slowly, blearily, he started to swim to the surface.

He opened his eyes.

Something was beeping and the world was too bright. He snapped his eyes shut.

A voice started talking, one he’d heard before in the dreams. Clipped and businesslike, but he thought he also caught a hint of something more positive, almost relieved, before thinking became too hard.

“Mr. Nelson? Franklin? Mr. Nelson?”

It was too late; by the time he registered that the voice was saying his name, he’d slipped back into the dreams.

 

It felt like both forever and not long at all before he woke up again, this time to see a woman sitting on the edge of his bed. She was holding his hand.

“Foggy Bear!” she cried.

Foggy stared at her. She had the most gorgeous green eyes he’d ever seen, even though right now they were red-rimmed. That struck him as odd, like he’d never seen her cry before. Weird observation since he was pretty sure he’d never seen her before in his life.

On second thought, maybe he should reevaluate that, because now her mouth was against his and aside from the fact that he didn’t know why a woman he’d never met would be kissing him, the pressure of her lips was warm and familiar.

There were tears on his cheeks now. Hers.

She pulled back, smiling but still crying. “You’re _awake_.”

He just nodded. Nodding was good, nodding was safe. Until he figured out who she was and what the hell happened to him.

But then he tried to think about _how_ he’d figure any of that out and became immediately overwhelmed by _everything_.

“Foggy Bear?” Her smile turned shaky.

He swallowed. Tried to. Swallowing was kinda difficult. “Foggy,” he corrected politely. That was his name. He remembered that from when he was a kid. He’d tried for like a year to outgrow the nickname and it hadn’t worked so he’d given up and realized he liked it after all.

Her smile was downright tremulous now. She sat back. Mascara was smudged under her eyes. Again, his brain registered this as abnormal even though he couldn’t explain why. “Do you…do you know who I am?”

Damnit. He hadn’t been as good at acting as he’d thought. His stomach flipped at the realization that _something was wrong with his brain_ and he was going to have to _talk_ about it because—

He shook his head.

Letting out a slow breath, she simply nodded. Wiped her eyes, which were drying fast. She stood up and smoothed down the front of her skirt. “It’s okay. They, um—the doctors said this kind of thing was possible. Uncommon, but…” She hesitated, eyes watering again, and blinked until the danger of tears had passed. “It’s all right. It’s not your fault. We’ll get through this.”

She seemed so completely in control that Foggy felt himself relax just the tiniest bit, sinking a bit more of his weight onto the bed and pillows, almost like he was resting his weight on her. He mustered his courage. “So…sorry…who are you?”

She sniffed and smiled sadly. “I’m Marci Stahl-Nelson. I’m your wife.”

That explained the ring on her hand. Also explained all that kissing, especially given the ring on her hand. But….

She reached for something on the bedside table and held it out to him. “This is yours.”

His eyes took their sweet time focusing on the tiny ring in her palm. His?

She slipped it onto the finger of his left hand. “I love you,” she whispered. “We’ll get through this.”

He nodded because she was obviously the kind of woman you agreed with whenever possible.

(She was his _wife?_ He’d lucked out.)

“It might not be permanent,” she went on. “We might just have to give it time, or…I don’t know, I didn’t actually look into this that much, since it’s so rare, but…I’ll figure it out. I just…” Suddenly she was blinking again, but that wasn’t enough to keep the tears at bay. She sat down quickly in the nearest chair. “I’m _so glad_ you’re awake, I really am, that’s not why I…this is just…” She gave her head a little shake of disbelief. “This timing. This timing is…”

“Sorry?” Foggy offered.

She was staring up at the ceiling like that would get the tears to disappear. “Not your fault. I’m just trying to deal with Matt right now, and he…I can’t even tell you how _furious_ I am with him after the stunt he just—” She cut herself off. “Sorry, you don’t need to hear about that. I’m sure he’ll be…I don’t know what’ll happen, actually, but I’m doing my best and you do _not_ need to worry about him right now, all right?”

He realized belatedly that the question wasn’t rhetorical.

“ _Right?_ ” she pressed, eyes narrowing.

“Yeah, sure, absolutely,” he said hurriedly, nodding along for good measure. “Just, um…” He trailed off, not wanting to upset her more.

Her face immediately softened. “Just what, Foggy Bear?”

“Um.” He tried to swallow again. “Who’s Matt?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout-out to my dad for training me to get annoyed in movies where cops pull up to a house with sirens blaring and promptly scare away the bad guys because cops don't do that for that exact reason. Thanks for the wisdom, Dad.
> 
> Side note: do any of you know how old Felix Manning is, or the actor who plays him? I can't find it online.
> 
> And then...yeeeah, I know retrograde amnesia from head injuries isn't as common as movies would like us to believe, but it IS possible, and more importantly, it's gonna set up one of my favorite scenes in this whole fic!


	36. Remember I'm by Your Side

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "As You Go" by Red (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hd_u5K0HGds).

Brett

“You’re an idiot,” Brett said, for the fifth time, as he led Foggy’s friend through the prison corridors to the nurse.

Murdock, for the fifth time, did not answer. He wore a waist chain with his wrists cuffed together in front of him. He was also wearing neither mask nor glasses, although Brett still couldn’t say this was the first time he’d seen his eyes since Murdock kept them half-closed and pointed at the floor.

“You know how hard it’s gonna be just keeping you alive in here?” Brett went on. He could already feel a different energy in the detention center as the word spread in whispers that Daredevil was here. “This is why we all wanted you out on bail.”

“Appreciate it,” Murdock muttered, flexing the hand of the arm bearing the dog bite and grimacing before he caught himself.

Yeah, dog bites were the worst. Brett pulled open the heavy doors to the nurse’s office. “Robinson said it was urgent. Who was Manning threatening?”

Murdock moved automatically to sit on the exam table. “Karen.”

“What’s he got on her that didn’t already come out in her proceedings?”

Murdock just raised his eyebrows, a _do-you-really-think-I’m-gonna-answer-that?_ look.

“Fair enough,” Brett acknowledged reluctantly. “So is that…still a problem?” He wasn’t sure what he could do about it if it was. But he could try.

Murdock shook his head.

“Huh.” Brett didn’t take back calling Murdock an idiot, but he also didn’t call him an idiot again. “Was it Fisk behind everything?”

“I dunno.” Murdock kept his head tipped towards the floor like it was too heavy to hold up. “Robinson said Manning took a deal and the prosecutors have their own agenda, so…it might just be between them.”

Brett leaned against the wall. “Sometimes I really hate this city.”

Murdock looked up, tilting his head, somehow managing to look both sad and judgmental.

“I know _you_ don’t,” Brett grumbled. “Maybe if you had to fill out paperwork for every worst-of-humanity thing you ran into, or if you had to listen to the scum whining, or if you saw how much they just get turned back out…” He trailed off. “I guess you do see plenty of that part. How does it not bother you?”

He didn’t really expect a response.

“It does,” Murdock admitted.

Brett raised his eyebrows. Not that Murdock could tell. Could he? Foggy hadn’t explained how his friend did what he did.

“It does,” Murdock repeated in a mumble, crinkling the flimsy paper as he shifted on the table, slumping over himself. “But it’s worth it.”

Maybe Brett knew the feeling after all. “Well…thank you. Just wanted to say that to your face.”

Murdock’s small smile took Brett aback. He was used to Murdock’s fake smiles, the win-over-the-desk-sergeant smiles, the don’t-hate-me-just-because-I’m-a-defense-attorney smiles. This one sure looked genuine. “That means a lot, Brett. Coming from you.”

Brett pushed away from the wall. “Anyway, I’ll put a detail on Karen if she wants it, in case whatever—”

“No,” Murdock said quickly, too quickly, suspiciously. “She’s fine. We’ve got…someone helping us.”

“I don’t wanna know,” Brett said immediately. Plausible deniability. He was just glad to hear Karen had more people helping her than only the idiot she’d married. He checked his watch; the nurse was just about there, so he had to stop being so friendly. “But listen, stay out of trouble, all right?”

“Don’t I always?”

Brett didn’t laugh. “I’m serious. You don’t have many friends in there.”

“I’m aware.”

“And…Murdock?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll…I’ll make sure you know if anything changes with Foggy.”

Murdock’s eyebrows pinched together in an uncharacteristic display of emotion. He wet his lips. “Thank you, Brett.”

Shrugging uncomfortably, Brett hooked his thumbs in his belt as the door opened. Two individuals entered: a nurse and a guard.

Murdock sat quietly as the nurse got to work, not reacting at all as artificial-smelling antibacterial lotion was spread over the bite, then covered in a sterile bandage. He obediently swallowed the two pills pressed into his hand. Aspirin.

“Looks good for now,” the nurse reported, “but we’ll need to be sure the wound doesn’t get infected. Ask for help if it becomes swollen, warm, tender, or red.”

“Red,” Murdock repeated blandly. “Got it.”

Brett tried to stifle a snort and failed.

The nurse was to businesslike to get flustered over the gaffe, though he did take the time to scowl at Brett. “Good news, Mr. Murdock. The officers say the dog has been inoculated against rabies.”

“Nice.”

The nurse clapped his hands briskly together. “All right, you’re free to go.”

Well, not really. That was the point.

 

Karen

She almost had a panic attack when Marci called her, but it was only because Foggy seemed to remember Karen and now his doctors or specialists or whatever wanted them to interact. The gap in his memory seemed primarily temporal: limited to the time surrounding law school. He couldn’t remember applying to Colombia, or attending classes, or graduating, or abandoning Landman and Zack. He _could_ remember his childhood.

And he could remember Karen.

In theory, at least.

It felt weirdly like going in for a test. Karen put on clothing that wasn’t very comfortable but looked like the kind of thing you should maybe wear to go see if your best friend actually recognized you, and Frank drove her to the hospital. Foggy should be released soon, apparently, and Marci was hopeful that being back in his own apartment would jog some memories, but he still needed monitoring. Lots of monitoring, judging by all the screens lit up in his room, casting weird blue-green light over his face.

“Karen!” He sat upright, eyes widening with joy and _relief_.

In the corner, Marci kept her eyes firmly on the pad of legal paper where she was scribbling notes. Her silver-gray suit was wrinkled.

 _He’s still Foggy,_ Karen told herself sternly. According to her rapid-fire research, retrograde amnesia targeted explicit memories—facts, details, accounts, history—instead of the implicit memories that made up personality. Technically, Foggy was still Foggy. (Privately, Karen wanted to punch medical science in the face for daring to claim that Foggy was still Foggy when he couldn’t remember his best friend.)

 “Foggy,” Karen said cautiously, approaching the bed. “You remember me?”

He nodded immediately. “You’re our PI.”

“Our?”

“Yeah, mine and…” He frowned. “Matt’s?”

“Yeah.” She lowered herself on the edge of the bed, folding her hands over her stomach.

Her sweatshirt wasn’t form-fitting, but Foggy’s eyes widened even more. “You’re pregnant! Yeah!”

“You remember?”

He nodded again, then frowned again. “Matt’s?”

How could he remember all these things about her and not remember Matt? He’d never even known her except in the context of Matt. “Foggy…”

“But I remember you,” he insisted. “I do. Uh…Union Allied, right? And…takeout, like weird amounts of takeout. Why do I associate you primarily with food?”

Typical Foggy. Feeling the smile spreading across her face, she made a point of not looking at Marci. “I think I should be offended,” she teased.

“Takeout is a _marvelous_ association, Miss P—Mur—” His forehead creased. “Huh.”

Her smile died.

Foggy briefly closed his eyes. “Sorry. I just don’t—”

“It’s not your fault.” She forced her voice to sound brighter. “But hey! You’re awake. Which means you can finally appreciate the vast array of bears Marci’s been hording for you.”

“Bears?” he echoed.

Marci was still staring at her notepad.

“They’re not _here_ ,” Karen explained. The medical staff hadn’t wanted to have to work around an army of stuffed bears. Nor had they allowed Karen to bring her selection of balloons. But there was a little speaker next to his bed with Micah’s old iPod containing clips of Ella’s voice telling Foggy stories.

Karen’s stomach flipped. Did he remember Ella?

Marci’s phone buzzed. She got up, set her notepad on the chair, walked across the room to Foggy, and kissed him confidently before disappearing to take the call.

Foggy watched her go, worry lining his forehead. “She’s not as unfazed as she’s letting on,” he said sagely. “I can tell. I’m good at reading women.”

Karen’s lips twitched. “Maybe you should’ve been a psychologist.”

“I _knew_ my career advisor hated me. Why else would she tell me to go to law school?”

Karen’s voice shook just a little. “Because she thought you’d save the world?”

He looked at her. Really _looked_ at her. “Hey. Are you okay?”

“Of the two of us?”

“I don’t think being un-okay is a zero-sum game,” he said gently.

Karen hugged herself. She couldn’t tell him about what was going on with Matt. It wasn’t fair to Foggy, who didn’t need yet another person to worry about, and she didn’t think she could stand talking about it when she shouldn’t have to be explaining any of it.

Before she could figure out what to say, Marci stepped back into the room. “Karen, I need to talk to you for a sec.”

Flashing another smile at Foggy, she followed Marci out of the room. “What?”

“Gonzalez called.”

She tensed. “And?”

Marci scowled at the floor. “And gave me some bullshit line about wanting to make sure you and I didn’t _misconstrue_ anything after our conversation with them.”

Karen blinked rapidly. “What, they’re…?”

“They’re backing off. Or so they say.”

“But Kevin…”

Marci scuffed her spiky heel against the hospital floor. “They’re letting it drop. I mean, it sounds like Matt was pretty, ah, thorough.” She rolled her eyes up at the ceiling. “So yeah, you can stop worrying about…you know.”

To Karen’s horror, she felt tears stinging her eyes.

“Don’t you _dare_ cry,” Marci snapped.

“Hormones,” Karen snapped back, blinking again. He’d done it for her, the stupid idiot, and it would be so much easier if she could just be angry with him, which she _was_ , but she was also struck by the thought of seeing the story of Kevin’s death plastered all over the internet, over and over and over again, and struck by the realization that none of that was gonna happen, and….

How could she be this mad at someone who’d spared her all of that?

“Marci,” she whispered. “Tell me it was worth it.”

Marci heaved a sigh. “How?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re gonna need to give me more than that. Worth it at the cost to my mental health? No. Worth it considering the damage to his case? Definitely not.”

To his case…? Karen searched Marci’s face. “But…?”

“But it got Manning to leave you alone and let your brother rest in peace.” Marci’s lips twisted. “So you tell me.”

 

Matt

Jail sucked. It sucked when he was on the outside and it wasn’t really surprising that it was worse on the inside. Voices constantly echoing, doors scraping open and slamming shut, and the traces of pepper spray in the air. He’d gotten a headache within minutes and didn’t expect it to dissipate any time soon. Someone was yelling just a few doors down, the words bouncing off every hard surface until Matt couldn’t even tell what language it was.

“I’m literally begging you to stop,” he muttered.

Not that anyone heard him. Or would care if they could.

He tried to meditate. It didn’t work.

In fairness, if he got convicted, he’d end up somewhere like this anyway. He was simply sitting in a cell sooner rather than later. And really, being in jail now wasn’t that bad. Not compared to what prison would be like in five months, give or take, when Karen was due. Or in a year. Or in two years, when the kid was the age Matt was when he realized he didn’t have a mom. Or in seven years, when the kid was the age Matt was when he realized he’d _never_ have a mom, that she wasn’t coming back. Or in nine years, when the kid was the age Matt was when he lost his dad.

If Matt was still in prison in nine years—no. Not an option. Whatever it took, he was gonna _be there_ for that kid.

Somehow.

Too much restless energy to sit on the bed, which left him no other option but to pace pointlessly back and forth in the tiny room.

Bad enough that he couldn’t patrol the streets. Couldn’t hear if some kid cried for help, if some woman was surrounded, if a fight broke out and people had knives or guns. Couldn’t do anything to protect his city.

But it was so much worse than just that. Someone could threaten Karen, or Foggy, or Ella, and there’d be _nothing_ he could do. Sure, there were others out there, guarding them. Peter, Stone, Jessica, and Frank Castle of all people. But they were only human. They could get hurt, they could make mistakes, they could _miss_ something.

What, then? Trust God? Trust God enough that if God let him down, it would actually mean something?

Yeah, no. Expecting God to help him right now, to care about him at _all_ , was the height of arrogance after the stunt he’d just pulled. After all, Matt was only here because he’d broken his promises ( _again_ ). He could only blame himself.

It wasn’t like he could’ve let Felix Manning do whatever he wanted. But he knew what Foggy would say to that: _There’s a lot of room between doing nothing and breaking into a guy’s house to beat him into pulp._

Yeah.

Stretching out on the cot, forcing himself to acclimate to the harsh bedding (sandpaper didn’t even cut it), he tried to keep track of time. But he must’ve dozed off because he suddenly jerked awake to the sound of his name.

Well. Not _his_ name, exactly.

“ _Daredevil_ ,” they were whispering, along with the number of his cell.

“ _Daredevil_ ,” they were whispering, along with a time of night.

“ _Daredevil_ ,” they were whispering, along with the name of a guard who would cooperate.

“Tomorrow,” they said.

The dread he felt was duller than fear. Matt closed his eyes and tried to meditate.

 

It was jarring to wake from a dream laughing with Foggy and Karen, cloistered in their office, to nothing but the walls of his cell. No idea what specific hour it was, but it must be late. Lights were out and pretty much all he could hear was slow breathing, sometimes snoring.

How much time did he have?

A single pair of footsteps was advancing down the corridor. Approaching. Swinging his legs off the thin mattress, Matt gripped the edge of the bed. Listened.

The footsteps walked past.

He forced himself to…not relax, that was impossible, but unwind. He closed his eyes.

More footsteps, coming from the other direction. This pair was heavier. Faster. And it stopped right outside his cell.

The _click_ of the lock disengaging. The door sliding open. Then Matt heard the dull buzz of the cameras switch off.

The guard stayed outside, posture too relaxed to match the strain in his voice. “Let’s go, inmate.”

Matt kept his eyes closed, wishing stupidly that he still had his glasses. “Where?”

“I said, let’s go.” The guard stepped into the room. “Transfer to another block.”

Matt tensed but stayed still. “I have to stay in protective custody.”

“Shut up.” The guard reached for Matt, who shot to his feet so fast the guard jerked backwards.

“I’m staying here.”

The guard’s hand drifted to his belt. Handcuffs, nightstick, taser, pepper spray, keys.

Matt’s heart started racing.

The guard’s heart was racing almost as fast. “I’m not gonna tell you again.”

Matt let the Devil slip into his voice. “You’re gonna have to.”

The guard’s fingers twitched and Matt lunged. The guard brought the nightstick up, catching Matt in the chest, but Matt’s momentum brought them crashing together. He pressed his forearm to the guard’s throat, slamming him back against the wall, but the guard’s other hand found the taser.

Matt realized what was happening a second before the sensation. Two icy prongs dug into his chest, and then the voltage hit like lightning arcing through his core. For a split second, the world on fire flared into sharper focus than ever as his entire body ignited in agony.

Then he was on the floor, muscles limp, trying to pin down where the smell of blood was coming from while his head spun and throbbed. The guard’s laughter echoed around the room, off the hard walls, off the floor where Matt had hit his head. He felt the blood clumping in his hair, and that answered that. Before he could move, cold metal locked around his wrists.

The guard hauled him to his feet and Matt, to his shame, sagged against him for one too-fast heartbeat before he straightened up. The guard pushed him towards the door before he’d quite caught his balance and Matt clipped the doorframe with his shoulder. Which shouldn’t have hurt at all except it felt like every muscle in his body had been doused in molten lava.

So everything hurt.

“Move.” The guard steered him through the door, one steely hand on Matt’s shoulder.

Matt forced his awareness outwards. Hallway. The hallway outside his cell, obviously. And it was relatively quieter here, in protective custody, but he was moving fast towards general pop.

“Approaching corridor three,” the guard started muttering into a radio.

“Green,” a muffled voice responded.

Well, dying in prison would not be per se _unexpected_. Still, Matt’s breathing was a little shallower than he’d like, and one awful thing about his senses was catching the scent of his own fear.

If Fisk had gotten his way, Karen would be in his position. The thought sparked rage and Matt turned without thinking. He drove his cuffed fists into the guard’s gut. The man doubled over, coughing. One of his hands yanked the pepper spray from his belt.

Matt froze.

Still fighting to get his breath back, the guard swore between wheezes, but he didn’t use the pepper spray. “You really…wanna do this here?” he forced out.

One-on-one was better odds except for the pepper spray. Matt could already smell it, could taste trace particles in the air. At this range, a spurt would be blinding.

“Move,” the guard grunted, shoving Matt back in the direction he wanted.

Matt was walking into an ambush, but at least the guard wouldn’t use pepper spray against his own allies. Would he?

And how many allies did he have?

What Matt wouldn’t give to have someone, anyone, on his side right now. Stone, Peter, Jessica, even Frank Castle.

He could hear the other heartbeats now, poised around a corner up ahead. Four. All men, all larger than Matt. All angry.

The guard pushed him around the corner.

But Matt turned in the opposite direction as the four inmates surged forward. He grabbed the guard’s wrist, twisting the pepper spray from the guard's hand. It flew across the hall, skidding along the floor. Left a trail in the air that made Matt’s throat and eyes sting. But he kept twisting the guard’s wrist, spinning them both so the guard was a shield against the inmates.

Worked for about two seconds before one of the inmates grabbed the guard and _pulled_. The wrist popped and the guard yelped as Inmate Number One threw the guard aside so Two, Three, and Four could get to Matt.

Matt flashed a grin. He flipped forward, brought the weight behind his heel down on Number Two’s skull, knocking his enemy face-first to the floor. Something cracked.

The others quickly stepped back.

Maybe, just maybe, his reputation would be enough to get him out of this.

Except that his reputation was why they hated him in the first place.

Inmate Number Three tapped something against his leg. A crude shank. One, Three, Four, and the guard all fanned out, filling the hallway.

Well, Matt wasn’t one to choose to play defense. He settled on Four for no particular reason. Could barely use his hands, though, and besides, he needed a display. Intimidation. He threw himself into a spinning double round-house kick. Four avoided the first kick, they almost always did, but the second snapped his head back. Foul-smelling blood sprayed in Matt’s face.

But he sensed the others converging as he landed. And he had to choose, was the thing. With his wrists locked together, he could only guard one part of his body at once.

He chose his head, lifting his arms and ducking down. He still tried to sidestep, still tried to dodge, but Number Three lunged after him and Matt sucked in a gasp as the shank sunk deep into his abdomen, its jagged edging tearing through him.

And then it was jerked back out.

The guard’s hand over his mouth muffled his broken yell as the edges cut through new muscle and blood poured out, thick and hot. Someone kicked at his leg and he hit the floor, landing on his side. He tried to fight back, tried to kick out or grab a leg or _something_ , but he made the mistake of stretching himself out, left himself too exposed. A heavy boot jolted into his ribs, knocking the air from his lungs. A deep ache spread from his core.

Nothing broken, not yet, just bruised.

He tried to get back up. He caught ahold of a hand reaching for his head and broke two fingers before someone else shoved him back on the ground. Another kick, to his back this time, sending throbbing pain shooting up and down his spine.

He curled into a ball, the picture of weakness, gagging on the smell of his own blood. They got closer, of _course_ they did, close enough for him to thrust upwards with his bound fists, feeling a lip split under his knuckles. Crouching, he kicked a knee out of place on someone else, heard the _pop_ as the joint dislodged. Under the chorus of curses, Matt pushed himself to his feet, blurrily sensed hands grabbing for him, and ducked forward.

Fresh blood soaked his jumpsuit as the movement pulled at the wound. He rammed straight into the nearest opponent and crushed his knee into the man’s groin, following it up with an elbow to the temple when the prisoner doubled over.

But Matt spent a bit too long making sure he was incapacitated, and he couldn’t dodge in time as the guard grabbed him from behind, shoving him into the wall. Tiny shards of cement stuck in Matt’s cheek. The bloody shank pressed against his throat for one heart-stopping second before Matt got his foot up, got leverage against the wall and just threw himself backwards. The shank cut at his neck, but the thin slit was the least of Matt’s worries. The guard’s other arm was locked around Matt from behind and he kept dodging Matt’s desperate attempts to head-butt him as he started stabbing—blindly, probably—with the shank.

Well, Matt learned how to get out of one-arm holds after two weeks with Stick. He rolled his body, not caring when the shank sliced along his shoulder, and shoved, forcing the guard backwards. But he didn’t bother to get his hands up to defend himself when the guard swung his fist. Taking the hit was worth grabbing the nightstick from the guard’s belt.

It was just one club instead of two, and Matt was handcuffed, but _this_ felt normal.

The inmates were out of the game on the floor, some moaning, some unconscious. Matt brandished the club and heard the guard’s heartbeat skip in instant fear. Nice to know he could instill terror even now, even as Matt listed to the side and barely managed to keep from leaning against the wall.

The guard reached again for the taser.

Matt threw the nightstick, knocking the taser from the guard’s hands. The weapon spun on the floor and Matt grabbed for it even though the desperate motion caused dizziness to wash over him. The sounds around him faded to distant buzzing. He wasn’t sure his aim was right when he pulled the trigger, but the guard’s screams reassured him.

The radio blared. _Disturbance in corridor twelve. Eaves, do you copy?_

One of the inmates was trying to get up again. Matt slipped on blood scrambling to get out of there. He caught himself on the wall and braced against it, wrapping his arm around his side as he put five, ten, fifteen, twenty yards between himself and his enemies. His torn jumpsuit was soaked over the wound, the fabric heavy with blood, and he wondered distantly what would happen if he passed out. But he could live with the pain, the fiery ache in his muscles and the inflamed bruises spreading just under his skin and the sharp sting across his side with every step. He could handle that.

So he didn’t really understand how he ended up on the floor.

 

Brett

Foggy Nelson didn’t invent bribery. Or manipulation. Live long enough in Hell’s Kitchen, especially in the justice system, and that became pretty clear. So yeah, Brett knew how to get what he needed when a situation became a crisis.

He didn’t use cigars, though. That was crossing a line.

He used his mother’s secret recipe for peanut butter fudge to let the medical staff know they should alert Brett when (not if) something happened to Murdock. When he heard about the ambush, his first call was to the warden who, at this particular jail, happened to be a friend of Brett’s through a long history of working together to keep bad guys off the streets. His second call was to Marci Stahl-Nelson.

She met him at the jail in twenty-three minutes.

She looked terrible.

Brett tended to avoid her so he didn’t know her well, but he’d never seen her so…ragged. Her eye shadow was smeared, her mascara smudged, and her ponytail was on the limp side. Her eyes told him she hadn’t slept for a week and she looked completely out of patience.

Brett took a slight step backwards, just to be safe.

“What’s this about?” she barked, wasting no time.

“We gotta get him out of there. You know they can’t keep him safe.”

Marci glared. “It’s the judge’s decision. And now that he was arrested for burglary and _assault_ , his choir-boy reputation won’t be enough to get him out on bail.”

“Look, I don’t know all the legal details, but it’s got to matter that he was attacked in there.”

“So the judge will instruct the jail to put more guards on him,” Marci said dismissively.

“I’ve got the warden ready to say it’s more trouble to keep him safe in here than it’s worth,” Brett shot back. “Besides, a guard’s the one that set it up! And we’ve got statements from other inmates to prove it.”

Marci’s expression turned skeptical. “They snitched?”

“Three of ’em,” Brett said firmly. “They tried to stop it from happening in the first place and got beat up almost as bad. One just hated the guard. The other two, though? Both had someone they cared about rescued by Daredevil. A son and a sister.”

Marci pursed her lips. “And I can always point out that it’ll look terrible if Lauria’s the reason Daredevil gets killed in jail, before his trial’s even over.”

Well…if Daredevil got killed in jail, maybe people would finally care about the rampant corruption. That was just one of the privileges of fame: people cared when you died. But Brett wasn’t about to let Foggy’s friend be the sacrificial lamb. He lowered his voice. “Look, I know it’s just temporary. If he ends up in prison, we’ll be having this fight all over again. But right now, we can at least do _something_.”

Marci rolled her eyes. Brett wasn’t one to feel sympathy for defense attorneys, but he had to feel bad for her. Seemed like there was always a new fire to put out when you were Murdock’s lawyer. And it wasn’t like Murdock could possibly be paying her enough for this.

Marci must really love Foggy.

And Foggy must really love Murdock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (So most tasers only have one shot and then you have to reload, but some exist that have, like, three shots in them, so that's what we're going with.)
> 
> Shoutout to SarahKnight for wanting Matt in prison!


	37. Sing it Louder if You Want Me Home Tonight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Home Tonight" by Chris Rice (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w96umLEwDVc).

Stone

The problem was that no one liked Dex. No one.

(Matty reluctantly tolerated Dex. It was clear to Stone that Matty did not like him.)

Picking the lock to get into Fogwell’s, Stone allowed himself a moment to contemplate how strange it was that the issue of whether people liked Dex even concerned him. But Dex needed to be _softened_ , and Stone could think of no other way to accomplish that except by giving Dex more people.

Yet Matty was busy trying to keep himself out of jail, and that left absolutely no one. Even Karen, who’d made such a difference in Stone’s life, was not an option. Firstly because she was currently staying with the Punisher, who might simply shoot Dex in the head if Dex said the wrong thing at the wrong time. Secondly because Dex had attempted to kill Karen on multiple occasions, and Stone was not actually certain whether she’d forgiven him.

Then there were the Valliers, who’d so effectively softened Matty, but Stone wasn’t an idiot. After what Dex had tried to do to Ella, he’d never be welcomed there.

And the world at large? They’d skin him alive.

But he knew of one potential exception. While Dex was distracted with the punching bags, Stone withdrew his phone and called her number before he could remind himself it was a bad decision. “Hello, Claire. It’s, uh…”

“Emiliano,” she finished for him, already sounding amused. “Bit of a mouthful, isn’t it?”

Giovani always called him Emi. “How are you?”

“Oh, we’re doing small talk.”  There was a rustling sound; he could imagine her curling up on the couch, perhaps with coffee. Or tea. Which did she prefer? “I’m doing fine. Thinking about getting a hamster.”

Stone was a bit thrown by that. “…Why?”

A teasing tone slipped into her voice. “So I have someone to talk to.”

Well…she was talking to him. “You like hamsters?”

“I don’t actually know, but the longest they live is about three years, so I wouldn’t have to put up with it very long if I don’t like it.”

Interesting calculus.

“Plus, I’m allergic to everything else.” She paused. “Possibly also to hamsters, now that I think of it. Anyway, what’s up?”

“I want to ask you for a favor.”

She paused again. “Ask away.”

“I’m with Dex right now.”

“Aren’t you always?”

He didn’t expect to be able to manipulate her into anything; better to be transparent. “And I think it would be good for him to talk to you.”

A third pause. “Why?”

“Because you’re soft.”

“ _Excuse me?_ ”

“In a good way,” he said quickly. In the best way possible.

“What way is that?” she demanded suspiciously.

“Just—just—yes or no, Claire.”

She exhaled quietly into the phone. Not quite a sigh. “If this is a favor, does that mean you’d owe me something?”

“Anything.”

“Anything?”

“Ah, within reason.”

She laughed quietly. “Well, in that case, you could bring him to my place.”

Stone wasn’t entirely sure why she was offering, but he was quite sure that he didn’t want Dex to know where she lived. “Or…you could come to us. We’re not that far. Fogwell’s Gym. You know it?”

“I can find it,” she said with utter confidence. “Hey, when’s the last time Dex had a homecooked meal, d’you think?”

Stone couldn’t remember the last time either of them had eaten a such a meal. “Why?”

She proceeded to expound the physiological and psychological benefits of good food, particularly warm food, and arrived promptly ten minutes later bearing two thermoses of hot soup. If she was nervous to be around Dex, she didn’t show it, and he was exceedingly polite. He also, at the first sip of her soup, essentially melted into a pool of contentment.

“I told you,” Claire whispered to Stone. “Try it.”

Stone wasn’t hungry. However, her eyes were so expectant that he refused to consider disappointing her. The spices (peppers, onion, cumin, jalapeño) were unusual—stronger than most American foods, invoking memories of eating leftovers at his grandparents’ home, except that the flavor of Claire’s soup was somehow heavier than what he remembered from Italy. Different, but appealing. Perhaps even welcoming. Almost masking the fact that the chicken broth was cheap and the tomatoes were slightly out of season.

“Good?” Claire asked.

“It tastes fine,” he said carefully. “I think it has too much flavor.”

 

Maggie

The second-story floor creaked under her feet as she made her way slowly up the hallway, pausing every now and then to listen outside a door to the sounds of quiet breathing. Night was the only time that St. Agnes was even close to quiet. But she knew the silence might break at any moment.

Some of the other nuns said Maggie was too old for this. The truth was, no one was ever too old for this.

The thought of her bed was appealing. Of course, sleep was hard to come by right now. More often than not, she stayed awake using prayer to combat her anxious thoughts. Practicing faith. Putting the people she cared about, one by one, into God’s hands. And putting them there again when she inevitably tried to snatch them back.

Matthew and Karen and the little one that was coming.

The precious kids here at St. Agnes.

All the people Matthew had introduced her to: Foggy, Ella, and now Jessica.

Dex.

Hushed, distressed sounds disrupted her thoughts. She quickened her pace until she slipped into the room Jonny shared with three other boys. The others slept on peacefully, but Jonny was twisted up in his sheets, whimpering. She sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed a soothing pattern on his shoulder. “Jonny, wake up.”

The child jerked upright, tear-filled eyes flashing in the dim light from the window. “You were dead!” he gasped, tears streaking his face. “You were dead and they were all dead and I was the only one left—”

“Shh, shh.” She stroked the hair back from his forehead. “You were dreaming, Jonny. Just dreaming. I’m right here, and everyone’s all right.”

His panicked sniffles slowed under her touch.

“Just a dream,” she repeated soothingly. “You were just dreaming.”

“But…” He trailed off, rubbing at his eyes.

“It’s all right, it wasn’t real.” She listened as his breathing gradually slowed down, his chest beginning to rise and fall more rhythmically. “I’ll stay with you until you fall asleep, all right? I promise.”

_I promise, I promise, I promise I’ll stay._

How many times had she whispered those words to Matthew, back when he was too young to even understand them?

As soon as Jonny fell back asleep, she was on her feet. Pulling the door closed until it _clicked_ , Maggie took two steps backwards and turned around, finding the stairs and hurrying to the front door.

Outside, the night was warm with the last grip of summer. She stopped in front of the garden she’d planted with Dex. Though the darkness dimmed the colors, she knew how joyful they looked each morning with the sun shining on them. Little bits of hope.

She closed her eyes. Sometimes it was easy to move on from her mistakes, to really believe what she taught: there was no undoing the past, but there _was_ grace.

And sometimes, like tonight, she felt keenly the injustice of each unearned moment of happiness.

“Father,” she breathed, and stopped, unable as always to get the words out. Confessing to a priest was hard enough, and she barely managed it. Speaking to God Himself, who’d entrusted her with Matthew in the first place?

Easier to throw herself into service, into charity, into a thousand kinds of business.

Speaking of which, there were still children to keep an eye on. With one last deep breath of city air, she opened her eyes and turned around and cried out at the sight of a man standing there, backlit by the warm light of a window, realizing a second later who it was.

“Matthew!”

“Hi, Mom.” His voice was weak. “Did, uh, did Karen tell you I’d been let out?”

Maggie shook her head. She knew he’d…well. She knew he’d been arrested, and she knew vaguely what for. But that was all. “Does she know you’re here?”

His turn to shake his head; a smaller gesture than hers. “Not specifically. I told her I had to take care of something on the way home.”

“Something here?” What could he possibly need to do here on his first night released?

What he said next didn’t exactly answer her question, or maybe it did. “I’m tired.” And it was hard to tell in the dark, but it looked like he swayed a little where he stood.

She hurried forward. “Come inside.”

“I didn’t want to disturb anything.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She brushed past him and barely heard his hushed inhale, instantly cut off. She whipped around, squinting to see him past the glare from the window behind him. “You’re hurt?”

He shrugged gingerly. “A little.”

“Matthew…” Opening the door, she held it firmly aside, refusing to let it close until he was standing in the foyer. Now that she’d found him, he didn’t seem to need much convincing, but what would’ve happened if she hadn’t come out here? Somehow, she didn’t think he would’ve gone in looking for her. He would’ve, what, stayed out there alone for however long it took him to sort through whatever was going on?

Her heart ached. It was probably narcissistic to assume that was _entirely_ her fault. But she certainly hadn’t helped.

She steered him into the kitchen where she could close the doors and turn on the lights without waking anyone or drawing too much attention, and where there was the added bonus of the presence of a small-ish first aid kit. Once she had the lights on, her heart sank at the sight of him. Blood matted his hair and ran down the side of his face; it looked like someone had smashed his other cheek against a textured wall. And from the way he hunched stiffly over himself, it was clear that he had some kind of injury on his side, though she couldn’t tell how bad it was. “What happened?”

“Aw, you know.” He sat carefully on the edge of a low table. “Some people were pretty thrilled to hear that Daredevil was in jail. I saw a nurse afterward, but he wasn’t very…invested. I’m fine.”

“You knew this would happen.” Statement, not a question.

“The prison system is even more corrupt than the courts.”

Slipping her hand under his chin, she tilted his head. The jail nurse hadn’t even bothered to wipe the blood off his face, so she moistened a napkin and dabbed at the red. “Why did it have to be you?”

His eyes fluttered closed. “Pardon?”

“Why did you have to go after Felix Manning? Why didn’t you ask Stone?” She pushed her fingers into his hair, searching for the source of blood.

He flinched away. “Ow. Mom.”

“Open your eyes for me.” It didn’t look like he had a concussion. Just run-of-the-mill head trauma. Her voice sharpened. “You should’ve asked Stone.”

To her surprise, he didn’t argue, didn’t defend himself. Just nodded.

Stuffing back a thousand words on the tip of her tongue that wouldn’t do any good, she set the soiled napkins on the counter and ghosted her hand over his side. “What’s this?”

He moved her probing fingers away. “Shank. I’m fine.” But he didn’t let go, instead running his thumb nervously over the back of her hand. “Hey, um…Mom?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Yes?”

He seemed to force the words out. “I need help.”

Somehow, she didn't think he was talking about his physical wounds. “I’m listening.”

“I didn’t tell anyone.”

He said it significantly, cryptically, like he’d just imparted a profound revelation. But he was gonna have to put in a bit more work to spell it out.

His small sigh sounded concessionary. “When I went to find Felix Manning. I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want anyone to try to talk me out of it.”

She couldn’t quite keep the edge of sarcasm out of her voice. “As if any of us might have succeeded.”

“I mean…” His right hand fingered the side of his pants, twisting the material between his fingers. “That’s not the point. The point is…” His other hand rubbed at his forehead. “I just broke every promise I’ve made both Foggy and Karen in the last year.”

“Sounds like it,” she agreed neutrally.

His eyes darted towards her, like he was checking to be sure she hadn’t left. “I, uh…there was this thing Foggy said to me. Feels like a long time ago now, although it wasn’t. Back when we first met Ella. He told me that when I’m, you know…when something goes wrong in my life, it causes him pain.”

“He’s a good friend,” she murmured.

“And Karen, she said that when I don’t trust her with, uh…when I’m upset, or something, it causes her pain.”

Maggie nodded.

Matt took a deep breath. “But I keep doing both those things. I keep messing up my life, and I keep pulling away to…” He gestured vaguely. “To deal with everything on my own.”

“You’re doing what Stick taught you.” Maggie hesitated. “And I should’ve taught you differently, but I—”

“Mom, please. It’s not your fault.”

It was, actually, but more importantly, this conversation wasn’t about her and her mistakes. She kept quiet, waiting for him to go on and share whatever he needed to say.

“I keep hurting them, and I—I wasn’t even thinking, except that I didn’t want anyone telling me to stop. Or telling me I can’t,” he added, voice suddenly so quiet she could barely hear it.

“Can’t what?” she asked cautiously.

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Do what I need to do. Fix things, help people, I don’t know.”

“Realizing your limits is how you know you’re not God,” she reminded him.

 “That’s not—that’s not the issue.” He sat up a little straighter, almost defiantly, like he’d accepted his fate and dared her to suggest it might not be set in stone. “I’m not getting better, and I’m sick of apologizing for the same things over and over again.” His lip curled. “They must be sick of it, too.”

Oh. Hence why he was here instead of home.

“I even—I even confessed to Father Driscoll. Because it’s sin, isn’t it? If I keep knowingly hurting them for no good reason? I’m supposed to love them and not cause them pain, but I _can’t_. I’m just making the same selfish mistakes…what’s the point of confessing if I’m going to keep doing it?” He clenched his jaw. “What’s the point of feeling so guilty about it if it doesn’t _change_ anything?”

She raised her eyebrows, surprised (and wondering why she was surprised). “Matthew, the guilt is never supposed to bring about change. Guilt isn’t strong enough.”

His expression suggested she’d shattered his entire worldview in one strike. “But…we’re supposed to change.”

“Yes,” she said patiently, “but not through guilt. Change comes through love.”

Now he looked conflicted. “I know that’s what you’re supposed to say, but—”

“Getting better, as you say, is a way to love God, isn’t it?”

“It’s a way to not disappoint Him, at least.”

Clearly they needed to back up about five paces. Except…she was not qualified to explain this, did not even want to broach the subject when she’d failed at loving her son so spectacularly. But his eyes were downcast, and it was clear that his soul was in much the same state. To keep silent now out of shame for her past mistakes flew in the face of the very thing she needed to teach him.

Drawing a deep breath, she moved closer, holding his larger, rougher, bloodstained hand in both of hers. “Matthew. When you try to teach this child of yours starts how to walk, how will you feel when they fall?”

He blinked. “I don’t know, I guess—”

“Because I’m pretty sure you won’t be angry or disappointed, will you?”

“…No.”

“In fact, why is it that you’d bother trying to teach your child to walk at all?”

He frowned. “Because it’s part of growing up.”

“And?”

“And…I don’t know, it gives them freedom to go places and learn things. It’s not that complicated.”

She boosted herself onto the counter beside him, letting her feet dangle and feeling very small and equally ill equipped for what she was trying to do. “Any good parent wants the best for their kids,” she said softly. “You want your kid to be able to walk because walking unlocks good things. But how would you feel if your child tried to walk only out of fear of making you angry?”

A mix of emotions flitted across his face.

“In the same way, God wants you to _get better_ , as you say, because _getting better_ means you can live a life with more freedom and more good things. Because He loves you. And how do you think God feels when you try to get better just to keep from upsetting Him?”

“It’s worked so far,” he muttered.

“You just told me you keep making the same mistakes,” she scoffed. “It’s true that loving Karen and Foggy, loving them _well_ , is a command from God. And the Bible says that every act of keeping such a command is an act of love towards God, too. But we also know that the only reason we love God at all is because He first loved us. So if you try to do the right thing and keep those commands out of fear or guilt instead of love…it just won’t work.”

“Mom…” He shifted his weight like he was about to slide off the counter.

She grabbed his hand again because _no_ , this was too important for him to run away from. This was _everything_. “You're not a burden to God. When Jesus died, he took on all the punishment that any of your sins—against God, against other people, even against yourself—ever deserved or will deserve. He was judged as guilty so you’d never have to be. That's how much God loves you.” She smiled slightly. “Or maybe I should dumb it down for you and point out how faithfully you love Karen and Foggy and  _me_ despite our mistakes, and ask if you _really_ think your love for us is so much stronger than the love Jesus has for you.”

His lips parted.

“God loves you, Matthew. You’re already forgiven, you’re _clean_.” She searched his face. “Tell me you believe that.”

In his eyes, hope battled with doubt. “I can’t stop trying. You know I can’t.”

“So don’t,” she said simply. “But don’t try because of guilt. Try because of how loved you are.”

 

Matt

He hesitated outside the front door to their apartment. He could hear Karen’s heartbeat from the living room—she was waiting up for him, despite how late it was. Which meant he couldn’t slip silently into bed beside her, put off this conversation until morning.

But it could be worse. Frank could still be here. His scent hung heavily in the apartment, but he was apparently gone for the night, maybe because Karen had asked him to go or maybe because he hadn’t wanted to be a witness to what could easily become a vicious fight.

Well, no. The imminent conversation was gonna be a too one-sided to really be called a fight. It wasn’t like Karen had done anything wrong.

He didn’t have a key on him and they’d stopped hiding the spare in the open—seemed too risky—so he was forced to knock. And wait.

He heard her instantly stand up. Faster than he would’ve thought possible, she flung the door open, reached for him, and stopped. “What the hell happened to you?”

The same thing that would’ve happened to her if she’d been imprisoned. More or less. Why was she even asking? He stepped past her inside and only let himself relax even slightly when he heard the door lock behind them.

She turned slowly to face him, like moving too fast would shatter him, like he was made of glass. “Matt…”

She smelled like home. His eyes stung. “I’m sorry,” he burst out. “It was my fault I was in there. I—I—”

“It’s okay,” she interrupted. It wasn’t; she obviously didn’t mean it. She was just trying to get him to calm down before he spiraled. Nice of her, especially when he could hear a tense edge to her voice. “Marci told me what you did.” She drew closer. Her hand wound through his hair and he winced as she touched the lump on the back of his head. “You said we were gonna figure stuff out together. Was that a lie?”

“No,” he said immediately.

“Then…?”

“I’m sorry, Karen.” The words were as true as they were useless.

“That’s it? That’s all I get?”

He wanted to hide himself from the bare honesty she deserved. “That’s all I have.”

“What about a promise that you won’t do it again?”

This honesty was even worse. “I…don’t think I can keep that promise.” No matter how much he wanted to, history showed otherwise. “But I promise I’ll try. I swear it.”

She made a dissatisfied sound, but then she lowered her hands to cup his jaw, guiding him down for a kiss. But when he put his arms around her, she responded in kind, making him flinch at the pressure over the wound on his side. She pulled back. “You’re bleeding through.”

He smiled wryly. “Not a surprise.”

“I deserved this,” she said under her breath, like there was the slightest chance he wouldn’t hear.

His chest tightened at the thought of her going through anything _close_ to that. He reached for her, intending nothing more than to pull her close and never let go, but the motion was too fast and too desperate. He sucked in a breath as the prison nurse’s shallow stitches tore.

“What happened?”

Smothering the wound with his hand, he felt fresh blood seeping into his shirt. “Nothing. Tore the stitches.” But he’d lost too much blood recently, and he suddenly had to stretch out a hand for balance.

“Matt…” She guided him with painstaking slowness to the couch and sat him down, then hurried across the room to grab the first aid kit. With the way she took up more space than usual, she had to sit on her knees and lean over him, and even then he could feel her stomach pressing against him, could almost feel the smaller heart beating inside.

Leaning his head against the back of the couch, he let his eyes fall closed and breathed slowly through his nose as she started unbuttoning his shirt, peeling the bloodied fabric back. She made a noise, angry and disgusted and guilty, when she saw the wound.

“S’not that bad,” Matt mumbled.

She got out the suturing supplies. “You can’t say things that stupid. It’s bad for my health.”

“ _Your_ health?”

“Yes,” she said firmly, readying the needle. He gripped the arm of the couch and spread his senses to the street outside, trying to track arbitrary pedestrians instead of zeroing in on the needle sliding under his skin. In and out, in and out. He gritted his teeth against the pain. It was taking longer than usual. When he reluctantly focused his senses back on what she was doing, he realized why: her hands were trembling.

“Karen,” he said, putting his hand on her arm. “Karen, stop.”

She froze. “Am I hurting you?”

“You’re shaking. Are you okay?”

Her answer was too quick. “I’m stitching up _your_ bloody shank wound, and you wanna know if _I’m_ okay?”

Biting the inside of his cheek, he sat up a little. “Did something happen?” Maybe not, maybe she was just angry with him for getting thrown in jail in the first place, or possibly even for letting himself get stabbed. But he couldn’t hear anger in her voice anymore.

“Let me finish this first.”

The words were so steely that he tamped down on the automatic flare of panic and forced himself to sit quietly under her touch until his side was stitched. Then he had to wait while she pressed a bandage over it, and he had to keep waiting while she started running her fingers over the rest of him like she was afraid she’d somehow missed something.

He caught her wrist before she could slide her hands around to his back and put pressure on the biggest bruise. “At least tell me if it’s bad. Whatever it is.”

“It’s just…a lot,” she said, and seemed to brace herself. “It’s Foggy. He’s awake.”

Matt was not one for melodramatic metaphors, but those two words were like a sunrise, like hot chocolate, like blood warming a limb that had been numb and cold. Matt could _breathe_ again.

“Um…Matt?”

There was something in her voice, something thin where there should be joy, and Matt didn’t want to think about what could possibly be causing it, so he ignored it. “When?”

“Yesterday. He woke up around nine or so and mostly just slept.”

“But he’s _awake_.” Matt’s head spun, drunk on relief.

“Matt…”

He closed his eyes like he could shut out whatever it was she wasn’t telling him. “I’ve gotta go see him. I have to…” Tell him how much he missed him, make fun of the haircut Matt couldn’t see, apologize for about a thousand things, sit there and listen to his heart beating and his voice.

She put her hand on his arm, demanding his attention.

Matt tensed. He wanted to hide, but instead he turned his face toward Karen in the hopes that she could see the desperation in his eyes. “Please. Don’t.”

“He’s okay,” she said quickly. “He’s still…he’s still Foggy, you know?”

Then why…?

“Matt, he, um…he doesn’t remember you.”

What?

Matt tried to make sense of it. “What?”

“He just…it’s partial amnesia, or…focal retrograde amnesia, that’s what they called it."

How was that possible? Years of memories, years of life shared together—gone?

No. Not possible.

Matt pulled away. “Karen…”

“It happens, sometimes. It usually just goes away on its own over time…”

“How much time?” he asked weakly.

“They don’t…they don’t know. But he remembers me. Which means he, you know, kind of remembers you…factually, at least.”

“Factually,” Matt repeated blankly.

“Which means he’s got pieces already,” she hurried on. “Building blocks. Or something. Right?”

Matt shook his head. “I have to talk to him.”

Karen hesitated. “Well, you’re…Matt, you look pretty bad.”

He threw her a disgruntled look.

“I mean, he doesn’t know about…you.”

Oh. Right. Because Foggy hadn’t been around for either Karen’s arrest or Matt’s, and he supposed it made sense why no one had told him. Their mistakes were the last thing Foggy needed to worry about right now.

Karen touched his cheek, right where the mask usually settled. “We don’t even know if he knows about Daredevil, or how much.”

A rock settled in his stomach and when he spoke, his voice sounded strained even to his own ears. “He has to.”

“He doesn’t even know he’s a _lawyer_. I mean, he knows, but he doesn’t _remember_.”

Matt stood up. “I have to see him. I have to talk to him.”

Standing to block him, she set a warning hand on his arm. “Hey, Matt, easy. You look like you’re about to fall over. He’s asleep right now, all right? So come on. Come to bed with me.”

He already knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, despite his exhaustion. No, he’d stay up thinking about Foggy, figuring out what to say and how to say it. But he let Karen lead him to the bedroom and curled up with her under the covers. Listened as her breathing evened out almost immediately, like she’d been using the last vestiges of her energy to stay awake waiting for him.

The city was loud tonight. Sirens wailed, people shouted. But going out tonight seemed disrespectful in light of what so many people had done to set him free. Rolling over, he pulled Karen closer.

He must have fallen asleep because he awoke to the warmth of the sun.


	38. Bring Your Brokenness and I'll Bring Mine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "If We're Honest" by Francesca Battistelli (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDcTvtuuVU8).

Matt

He put on his old Colombia sweatshirt to go with Karen to the hospital. If anyone asked, it was because he thought it might trigger Foggy’s memories. Honestly, though, he knew he’d need every scrap of comfort he could get and this old sweatshirt was so familiar that he knew every torn and knotted thread.

He didn’t want to do this.

Was not, in fact, entirely sure that he _could_ do this. Outside Foggy’s room, he could smell Foggy’s scent and hear him fiddling with something on his phone, and those two things together were enough to tell Matt that Foggy really was awake, which meant the world had settled back into place. But Foggy also didn’t remember him, which meant the world hadn’t settled back into place for Matt.

“You two are _best friends_ ,” Karen was reminding him. Like he could forget. She was dressed just as casually, wearing jeans and one of his shirts that was stretching just a bit over her stomach. And flats, not heels. Like they were just going to watch Netflix with Foggy and randomly decided to hang out at the hospital. “He’ll remember eventually, I know he will, and in the meantime, you can just…” Her voice weakened a bit. “Reintroduce yourself.”

Easy for her to say.

“Matt.” She smoothed down the front of his sweatshirt, carefully avoiding the injury to his side. “He always told me that meeting you was like love at first sight. And you’re both still the same guys you were back then.”

“Karen, you don’t _get_ it. When we were paired together at Colombia, I…yeah, it was like love at first sight, I guess, but not because…” His breathing was speeding up, getting shallower. He took a deep breath. When they’d met, Matt had still been so very messed up. Broken in so many ways. He’d contributed exactly nothing to whatever it was that made them friends. “It was Foggy, Karen. It was all Foggy.”

“He’s still Foggy,” she told him.

But he wasn’t, not really, not if he couldn’t remember Marci or Matt or that he was a lawyer or—

“Matt.” Her voice broke into his spiraling thoughts. “We don’t have to do this. But the doctors say exposure to the things he’s forgotten will help. The sooner he gets back to the way things were…”

Matt straightened up, frustrated with himself. “Sorry. I’m being selfish.”

“It’s not selfish to be afraid of this.”

He couldn’t deny the fear, but he didn’t really want to agree to its presence either. He shouldn’t be afraid. Father Lantom wanted him to be fearless. The least he could do was…was walk into a damn hospital room and say a few words to his best friend.

“Although…maybe you could take off the glasses?”

“Karen.”

“I’m just saying, it might have a placebo effect. Make you more comfortable.”

He knew from experience that it would _not_ have a placebo effect and would _not_ make him more comfortable. But it would probably make _her_ more comfortable. He folded them into his pocket.

“You’ve got this,” she whispered in his ear, her lips soft against his neck. She gave him a little nudge into the room.

He could tell the second Foggy saw him because his heartbeat quickened. Not with recognition. In nervousness. Because a strange man was coming into his room. An obviously-injured strange man with glasses and a cane and an old Colombia sweatshirt.

_God, please._

Matt didn’t even know exactly what he was praying for. Courage. Strength.

To hear recognition in Foggy’s voice.

Karen stepped into the room behind him and Foggy quickly greeted her. “Karen!” he called, voice bright. “Beautiful as ever. How’s the unborn?”

“The unborn’s doing great.” She crossed the room to kiss his forehead. (Matt found his feet planted just inside the doorway.) “No complications. Anyway, um…” She backed up and sort of gestured at Matt.

“Matt?” Foggy asked. No, _guessed_. It was chilled. Distant. The result of context clues and the process of elimination.

Still, Matt nodded. Forced his mouth to say, “Hey, Fogs.”

“Geeze, are you okay?”

“Why, don’t I look it?”

“Matt,” Karen said softly in admonition.

Foggy sounded wretchedly confused when he asked, “What happened to you?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m fine.” It wasn’t real worry, anyway. Just shocked concern for a stranger. Matt didn’t want it.

“You don’t look fine.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Matt.” Karen squeezed Foggy’s hand. “Sorry, Foggy. I wish I could say he isn’t always like this.”

Foggy’s chuckle was polite and uneasy. “So,” he began haltingly. “We were partners, huh?”

Matt nodded again and risked a step closer. “Yeah. Nelson and Murdock.”

“You’re the Murdock?”

He could do this. Just had to keep it together. He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt. “Yeah,” he managed. “Matt Murdock.”

“Colombia,” Foggy said suddenly. “That’s where we met?”

“We were roommates.”

“Roommates,” Foggy echoed, tasting the word. “What, the whole time?”

Was he finding it hard to imagine? Wondering why he’d put up with a weird, blind roommate for so long? Matt forced his lips into a smile. “All three years of law school, yeah. It wasn’t easy adjusting to my first few months living alone after that.”

Then he snapped his mouth shut. He hadn’t meant to say that; he’d never told Foggy that.

“Are you okay?” Foggy shifted in the bed. “Besides the obvious, I mean. Marci won’t tell me what’s going on, but I know you’re in some kind of trouble.”

“No more than usual,” Matt said, which was kind of not even a lie. “Listen, Foggy, I—I’m sorry you got hurt.”

“Me too.” Foggy hesitated. “I’m sorry I don’t remember you.”

The shank hurt less.

Foggy stiffened like he’d read it in Matt’s face. Could he still do that? “I mean—”

“Not your fault.” In a fit of bravery, Matt moved closer until he stopped right beside the bed. “Are you, uh…are you doing okay here? You have everything you need?”

“Except the jacuzzi the nurses keep promising me,” he answered promptly. “Maybe you could get on that?”

“First thing,” Matt promised. He cleared his throat. “We’ll…we’ll bring you back, all right, Fogs? I swear.”

“I don’t know if anyone’s told you this, but it’s _really_ hard not to believe you when you make that face.”

“I’m serious. It’s just your brain. How complicated can it be?”

“Excuse you, I’m _very_ complex,” Foggy retorted, sounding almost like his old self. “And mysterious. Don’t forget mysterious.”

“Definitely not.” Biting his lip, Matt reached out. He didn’t grab Foggy’s hand, but waited for Foggy to move his hand under Matt’s. “We’re gonna figure it out.”

 

Peter

Queen’s was bad, but Hell’s Kitchen was worse. The criminals, even the ones that weren’t exactly up-to-date on the news, had finally figured out that Daredevil was on trial. Needless to say, they were all acting like Christmas had come early. Seemed like the NYPD was doing their best, but…it was a _lot_ of criminals.

Now, for instance. Peter poked at one of the three goons he’d left webbed up to the side of a gross old bar. The one goon tried to complain, but the webbing over his mouth muffled the words. “Sorry, man. Speak up? I think I’m getting a cold or something, can’t hear very well.”

The muffled words got more…intense. Probably words Aunt May wouldn’t approve of.

“Nope, still can’t hear you. Karen, translation?”

Karen didn’t respond immediately, like she was dutifully listening. “No translation possible,” she reported at last. “Audio unintelligible.”

Peter nudged the goon with his foot. “She says you’re unintelligible.”

This time, the noises were more questioning. But Peter didn’t bother explaining Karen to cocooned criminals. He had more important things to do, like calling the cops and moving on to the next group of bad guys. Hell’s Kitchen wasn’t exactly his neighborhood, but that didn’t stop their friendly next-door-neighborhood Spiderman from helping out.

Then he almost jumped out of his skin when he felt a buzzing across his body. Wait, no, the buzzing was concentrated in his leg. Peter was just a bit tense, still, after…everything. More than once he’d heard a loud sound at school and been _this close_ to jumping straight onto the ceiling. (Ned started preemptively grabbing him whenever there were loud sounds, just in case.) (It wasn’t even his spidey sense, it was just…him.) Anyway, he was trying to meditate; Matt commented almost passive-aggressively more than once that he might be less “spasmodic” if he centered himself more, or whatever.

Point was, his leg was still buzzing. His phone, actually. His very old phone that was more like a blunt force weapon than a communication device. Matt had one like it, and it seemed like a good idea, and the weight of it in Peter’s pocket reminded him of the weight of the risk he was creating every night for the very people _in_ the phone, which he thought was a cool metaphor.

 _Admiral Ackbar_ flashed across the screen. Flipping it open, he held it to his ear. “Yo.”

“Hey, wanna hang out?” Ned asked.

Peter pinned the phone between his elbow and his ear, feeling like a busy fifties housewife if busy fifties housewives had cell phones. “Can’t, man. Sorry.”

Ned started to sigh and stopped himself. “You’re in Hell’s Kitchen again.”

“I gotta. It’s crazy out here.” Yeah, once the news picked up the story, it’d been kind of impossible to keep Matt’s identity a secret from his friends. Michelle was the one who’d figured out that Matt and Foggy were the lawyers who kept Spiderman out of a similar situation, and she’d been distinctly impressed. And Ned got just as excited over Daredevil as he ever was over Spiderman; he started firing non-stop questions about Daredevil’s abilities, fighting style, arch nemeses, etc.

“I get it,” Ned said quickly. “Michelle and I were just gonna go get pizza with you if you were free.”

Bringing Michelle in—a low blow. “I want to,” Peter said plaintively.

“Nah, be a hero. I get it, it’s cool. I guess we’ll see you when the trial’s over, right?”

“Yeah, definitely,” Peter’s mouth said, while his brain unhelpfully pointed out that the outcome of the trial wasn’t certain and what was gonna happen to Hell’s Kitchen if Matt was convicted?

“Okay, so…stay safe out there,” Ned said encouragingly.

“Will do,” Peter promised. He snapped the old phone shut and put it back in his pocket. Swung a couple blocks down the street before stopping.

He really did wanna get pizza with Ned and Michelle.

And there really wasn’t an end date to Hell’s Kitchen’s emergency.

And probably most importantly, Mr. Nelson would give him that disappointed look if he knew Peter was blowing off his friends to run around being a hero.

Peter chewed on the inside of his cheek for a few seconds. Then he sighed and pulled the clunky phone back out. “Hey, Ned? Um, what kind of pizza are you getting?”

 

Marci

She was sitting in Foggy’s new hospital room, where he’d been moved now that he needed less monitoring. She was supposed to be preparing questions for Matt’s direct examination, but it was hard to focus.

“Who’s coming, again?” Foggy asked, sitting up.

“Ella,” she said for the third time.

“Oh, yeah.” He settled back against the cushions. The fact that he needed to gather strength in anticipation of social interaction was only one of the few changes she’d noticed.

He didn’t struggle with speech or putting sentences together the way many survivors of brain trauma did. But thinking about future events was almost as difficult for him as remembering past ones. He kept forgetting plans and absolutely couldn’t make them himself. Other symptoms the doctors had discovered included something called agraphia (difficulty with writing) and acalculia (difficulty with mathematics, although Foggy wanted to know how they could tell the difference since he’d never been good at math).

Marci hated to think what would happen if these symptoms didn’t disappear, and she hated to think what symptoms they had yet to discover. Still, he _was_ better off than a lot of other survivors. Having a naturally high IQ helped. So did having a vast support system, so big that it would be almost scary if it weren’t helping him so much. The system included but was not limited to Marci, Karen, Matt (doing his best), Theo, Foggy’s parents (who’d come up from Florida), and a small army of law school friends, friends from the precinct, friends who were _prosecutors_ , and other random people Foggy had collected over the years.

Oh, and Ella and her family. Whom he actually remembered.

It wasn’t personal, just a symptom of timing.

Still, Marci had to wipe the bitter look off her face when she heard a knock on the door and a tiny voice ask, “Foggy?”

“Ella?” Foggy called. When she edged into his room, Micah behind her, his eyes brightened with recognition (which hurt a little, that he’d look at Ella like that but not…), and then dimmed with confusion. Probably because he was trying to reconcile memories of Ella with the gap that was Matt.

“Foggy!” Her breathing hitched. “You’re—you’re _okay_.”

“You knew that, pumpkin. They told you that.” Struggling to sit up again, he held out his arms.

But she hesitated, tear-filled eyes darting fearfully over his face.

“It’s me,” Foggy whispered. “It’s just me. I’m okay.”

Still she hesitated, like she was afraid she’d break him if she touched him, or maybe that he’d simply vanish from sight if she got too close.

“Ella, it’s okay. c’mere.”

She took one tiny step towards him. Then, like she couldn’t wait a second longer, she surged forward, scrambling up onto the bed and smothering him with her mane of hair. She was crying and clearly trying to fight it.

“Don’t cry, Ella.” He stroked his hand over her hair. “I’m okay now.”

She sniffled fiercely. “I came to visit you. Did they tell you?”

“Can I tell you something? I heard you.”

She pulled back enough that Marci could see her widening eyes. “You remember what I said?”

“No, but I remember your voice. It was in my dreams.” Scrunching his nose up, he winked at her. “It was one of the best parts of my dreams.”

“It was?” she asked shyly.

“Would I lie to you?”

Her eyes widened at the very thought and she vehemently shook her head.

“Exactly. Now c’mon and tell me everything important that I’ve missed.”

“Wait—” Marci tried to say, but it was too late; Ella lit up and started gushing about school and friends and her parents and a visit to humane society because Ella’s parents had finally begun to tentatively consider getting a dog.

“Like Matt’s dog!” she chirped. “Oh!” She whirled around towards Marci so abruptly that she almost threw herself off the bed. “Miss Marci? I had a question about that?”

“About the dog?” Foggy asked bemusedly.

“About Matt,” she corrected, staring at Marci with a surprisingly serious expression.

Marci hurried to her feet. “Ella, let’s come outside and talk about it.”

The seven-year-old had no objection, according to the way she scuttled off the bed and out the door ahead of Marci, but Foggy had an objection written all over his face. Marci ducked outside before he could voice it, closing the door firmly behind them once Micah had wordlessly joined them.

It wasn’t like she was trying to keep Foggy in the dark about Matt. It was just that everything about Matt was…complicated. And she wasn’t sure anyone but Matt could explain it.

Sequestered outside, Marci wasted no time with Ella. “What’s your question?”

“Um…” The little girl lowered her eyes and ducked her head, scuffing the toes of one shoe against the floor.

“Yes?”

“Um. I just. Um.”

Micah dropped his hand on her shoulder, squeezing once.

Taking a deep breath, Ella looked back up. “Miss Marci, I wanna help Matt.”

Marci raised both eyebrows. “Good for you.”

“I wanna testify.” She pronounced the word confidently. Had she been practicing?

“Mm-hmm. Matt said something about that.”

“He said it was a bad idea,” she said mutinously.

Actually, he’d said it was something to think about. She wasn’t sure what had changed. Except perhaps for Felix Manning’s threats against Karen, which had clearly gotten to him more than Marci anticipated. “So why are you coming to me?” she asked, glancing between Ella and her father.

Ella jutted her chin up defiantly. “’Cause I don’t think he’s telling the truth.”

“And you think I would?” She had a lot to learn about lawyers.

She narrowed her eyes. “You’d _better_.”

“Ella,” Micah said quietly.

“Sorry,” she said without a trace of sincerity.

Pursing her lips, Marci waved them into the office, settling them in the chairs in front of her desk while she sat on the other side. Normally she didn’t conduct interviews with children from behind her desk. (Normally she didn’t conduct interviews with children at all, but in _theory_ she wouldn’t sit behind the desk.) But she wasn’t interested in setting Ella at ease. “All right. Sell it to me. What, exactly, do you wanna say?”

Ella swallowed. “He saved my life. A lot. And he gave me my family.”

Marci tilted her head. “And? That’s it?”

She hesitated. “He’s, um, teaching me how to fight, but he said I shouldn’t talk about that.”

“He’s right. You shouldn’t. What else do you wanna say?”

“Whatever people need to hear to know he’s being a _hero_.”

Ella’s emotional well-being wasn’t strictly Marci’s concern. Still, it felt negligent not to say, “You realize nothing you say will be enough to get him off, right?”

From Ella’s expression, it was clear that no, she didn’t know that. “I can help,” she insisted.

“Sure you can,” Marci agreed, choosing to let someone else try to define the limits of _help_.

 

The next day, Marci met Matt at court bright and early. Today they were arguing for a directed verdict on Matt’s counts: in other words, arguing that Tower had failed to provide enough evidence for a reasonable jury to convict Matt under the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard of proof. Such motions rarely succeeded, a generality Matt seemed to have taken to heart.

“She won’t grant anything,” he warned, holding the door open for her. They were the first to arrive. These motions were heard outside the presence of the jury, so Marci resolved to enjoy the relative solitude while it lasted.

“Not with that attitude.” If Lauria granted the motions, the trial would be over now. She wouldn’t have to worry about putting Matt or Ella or anyone else on the stand.  She could focus on Foggy.

“It won’t matter,” Matt insisted, following her to their table. “It’s just Lauria being Lauria, and she’s supposed to consider the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution anyway.”

Though Marci privately agreed that the motions were likely to fail, she sniffed indignantly. “I’m offended, Murdock. Really.” She’d put in a lot of hours over the motion, sitting in Foggy’s room and reviewing all her notes from the testimony. If only to keep herself from staring helplessly at Foggy.

“It’s not that I don’t think you’re good,” Matt tried to explain.

“I don’t really care what you think of me.” Setting her briefcase on the table, she started pulling out her notes and arranging them. “Now sit there and look pretty and let me talk.”

Matt’s eyebrows narrowed over his glasses, but he did as he was told.

Tower arrived moments later. He set his stuff down at his table, dithered a bit, then approached the defense table. “Morning.”

“Hi!” Marci said brightly. “Getting enough sleep recently?”

“Excuse me?” Tower asked, clearly baffled.

“Crime rate’s gone up five percent since Matt’s trial started. I can only assume your office is swamped.”

“We’re handling it,” Tower said stiffly.

“Mmm-hmm. Still, I bet your life would be easier if only there were some _deterrent_ out there, keeping criminals off the streets. Since clearly the NYPD isn’t sufficient.” Shrugging, Marci returned to her notes. Matt was fighting to keep from smirking. It was a losing battle.

Tower lowered his voice. “It could be worse. At least we don’t have anymore Punisher types taking after Daredevil.”

Matt stood up ridiculously fast. “The Punisher wasn’t a Daredevil copycat. He had his own unique motivations that were subjectively reasonable to him given his unique—”

“I’m just saying,” Tower cut in. “It could be worse.”

“Could be a lot better, too,” Matt retorted.

With a beleaguered sigh, Tower raised his hands as if in surrender and retreated to his desk.

“That was pleasant,” Marci muttered under her breath.

Matt half-smiled.

“What?”

“You sound like Foggy.”

She pursed her lips and couldn’t come up with anything to say in defense. She wasn’t sure why she thought she needed a defense in the first place. It didn’t matter because the bailiff opened the doors for Lauria.

The attorneys stood up and, on Lauria’s invitation, Marci started them off with her head held high. “Your Honor, the defense motions for a directed verdict on all counts. The prosecution has failed to provide enough evidence for a reasonable jury to convict on the two counts of assault against a police officer with a deadly weapon, three counts of strangulation, and eight counts of menacing police officers.” Marci looked briefly at her notes. “Starting with the misdemeanors: menacing police officers. The only evidence the prosecution provided was the reluctant testimony of a single officer.”

“A detective well acquainted with the other victims, given that they work together,” Tower pointed out. “The detective clearly testified that Daredevil threatened him and the other victims, _with a weapon_.”

“The prosecution should have provided more evidence than the testimony of a single individual to overcome the jury’s reasonable doubt,” Marci insisted.

Lauria’s face was neutral. “Let’s hear your next motion, Counselor.”

“Yes, Your Honor. The prosecution has also failed to provide sufficient evidence as to the counts of strangulation, particularly because the prosecution failed to prove that the defendant was responsible for the medical records presented.”

“Your Honor,” Tower protested, “our expert witness explained that the victims who suffered strangulation also suffered injuries from the type of weapon that Daredevil uses. Moreover, one victim clearly and explicitly said that ‘Daredevil did it.’”

“One victim’s claim isn’t enough, especially when Daredevil’s weapon of choice isn’t exactly unique. It’s a _club_ , Your Honor.”

“A billy club,” Tower shot back.

“Move on to your next motion,” Lauria instructed, giving no sign as to whether she was swayed in either direction.

Undeterred, Marci kept going. “As for kidnapping, the prosecution has failed to demonstrate who, exactly, was kidnapped and how the victim was coerced or restrained.”

“Your Honor, both Wilson Fisk and Detective Mahoney explained that Daredevil held the late Officer Sullivan hostage and Detective Mahoney further explained that Officer Sullivan was found duct taped to a pole.”

“Detective Mahoney never agreed that Daredevil was responsible for holding Sullivan hostage,” Marci cut in. “All he did was read from a speculative report written by someone who didn’t observe what actually happened.”

Lauria held up a hand to stop Tower from responding. “And your final motion?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Marci said. “The prosecution has failed to show that Daredevil ever assaulted a police officer with a deadly weapon. Although Detective Brett Mahoney did admit that he got into an altercation with Daredevil, he never said that Daredevil used his weapon to inflict any harm. As for the second count, the witness wasn’t present at all when Daredevil allegedly attacked the late Officer Sullivan.”

Tower scoffed. “Your Honor, Detective Mahony was clear that Daredevil attacked him while wielding his billy club. The record also clearly shows that only Daredevil, the Russian, and Officer Sullivan were in that building and only Daredevil left alive. And Detective Mahoney wasn’t the only witness—Wilson Fisk also testified that Daredevil held Officer Sullivan hostage which, given the fact that Sullivan was found with a stab wound in his neck, demonstrates that Daredevil did in fact physically attack Officer Sullivan.”

“The record _clearly shows_ that none of us have any idea what went on in that warehouse,” Marci said sharply.

“Thank you, Counselors,” Lauria said, drawing herself up in her chair. “I appreciate your arguments—” She clearly didn’t, not really, “—but the prosecution’s case is not so full of holes as you would have me believe, Ms. Stahl-Nelson. I’ll leave it for the triers of fact to reach a verdict after hearing your evidence.”

And so the trial would progress. It wasn’t a surprise, but it was irritating. Resigning herself to getting no more sleep than Tower, Marci tried not to feel too disjointed. But while her mind was skipping ahead to the upcoming witness lineup, her heart was stuck in a hospital room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do...do flip phones have caller ID? I swear I'm old enough to have used one, but I can't remember?
> 
> Long note that doesn't matter too much:  
> And about the directed verdict: I made the mistake of not sketching out the closing for the prosecution in detail before writing the direct exams, which meant I left some stuff out when I got too excited over the other questions. Rookie mistake. So I've since gone back and added a few questions, particularly to Brett's examination, and that's where Tower's getting some of the stuff he's referring to here. (Idk how many of you are paying that close attention.)
> 
> And just in general, I've never SEEN the directed verdict motion process so...I might be hand-waving this a bit; I'm mostly using it as a marker to consolidate the evidence so far. If that makes sense.


	39. Big Love Happens in the Small Moments

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Big Love, Small Moments" by JJ Heller (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXOCDCbBCqc).

Matt

Standing under the water tower, with his mask pushed back from his face, Matt tried not to be annoyed. After Lauria ruled against their motions, Marci apparently thought she could cheer Matt up by filling him in on her conversation with Ella. Matt hadn’t felt very cheered up. Impressed at Ella’s guts to bypass him and go straight to Marci, sure. Frustrated that Marci would encourage Ella when she knew what he thought about it, definitely. Not cheered up, not at all.

(It _was_ sweet, obviously. But the warm feeling didn’t have a chance to grow before it was snuffed out by the cold dread of all the things that might happen to her if she publicly associated herself with Daredevil in this new way.)

Now Matt was in the awkward position of either letting her go through with her plan or quashing her efforts to help him. The way she’d been handling things recently, he wouldn’t be surprised if telling her she couldn’t testify would send her straight to Tower’s office to try to beat him up.

(Which would be…amusing. And terrible, obviously. So no. Just no.)

It was exactly the kind of problem Foggy would have a thousand opinions about, almost all of them good, if he just knew all the facts. But he didn’t, and Matt’s mind shied away from even thinking about how to remedy that without burdening Foggy unnecessarily.

(Foggy would want to be burdened unnecessarily. Probably? How was Matt supposed to make that decision _for_ him?)

Resolving to deal with the issue later, Matt extended his senses through Hell’s Kitchen. The sounds warped around the water tower, but aside from that he was high enough to hear almost the entire city crystal clear. Cars honking, radios, people laughing if they were inside or somewhere safe. Lots of yelling, though. Glass shattering a few blocks down. Matt took two steps in that direction before he realized no one was actually in the bodega. The burglars should be stopped, yes, but they weren’t in immediate danger of causing anyone else physical harm.

Unlike the brawl outside a bar three blocks in the other direction where one person suddenly shouted, “I gotta gun!”

Pulling his mask over his eyes, Matt raced in that direction. His stitches held for the first leap, although one popped out in the second. Someone—Maggie, Claire, or Karen—was gonna murder him. He didn’t care; he missed protecting Hell’s Kitchen.

Although he wasn’t the only one protecting Hell’s Kitchen anymore.

Another heartbeat beat him to the scene—light, strong, fast. He caught a _thwip_ and a synthetic scent as Peter shot webbing at the gun, snatching it away. The three middle-aged men who’d been shouting at each other froze.

Then they seemed to collectively channel all their aggression at Peter.

“Whoa,” Peter said, hands raised. “You can keep screaming about fantasy football all you want, but if you want my opinion I think you should consider how fantasy football is undermining the spirit of teamwork and American— _okay_ , you don’t want my opinion!” He flipped up onto a dumpster across the ally from the bar. “Easy, guys, just stop waving guns around and be chill.”

Needless to say, the three men were not happy with a smaller guy in spandex telling them to chill. They lunged toward Peter, who leapt into action.

The kid was doing well, but he sounded exhausted, he smelled like blood (his own as well as others’), and he was definitely favoring his right leg. Matt leapt from roof to roof, flipping over barristers and shoulder-rolling into a crouch at the edge of the roof over the ally. He cocked his head for a second, heard one of the criminals who’d been thrown aside stagger back to his feet. But he was behind Peter now, and Matt didn’t hear the kid react; he seemed too focused on dealing with the two in front of him.

Matt dropped off the edge. He landed behind the criminal, and a quick punch to the kidney and hook to the side of the temple knocked the man to the ground.

Peter whipped around. He’d taken care of the others—webbing was _incredibly_ efficient—but he jumped backwards in shock. “Matt! I—I mean, Daredevil!”

It didn’t matter so much anymore, but Matt appreciated his concern as he confiscated the gun. “Hey, Spiderman. You’ve gotta use your senses behind you.”

Peter’s body temperature rose slightly with embarrassment. “Yeah, I know.”

No one but Peter was looking, so Matt smiled more gently. “You’ve been busy. I get it.”

Peter yawned and immediately tried to smother it with his hand. “I’ve been learning a lot, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, how to be more intimidating. Hell’s Kitchen criminals are used to dealing with, y’know, _you_.”

“From what I’ve heard, you’ve been doing pretty good.”

Peter perked up. “Really?”

Matt nodded. Sure, the criminals were more active right now, but Matt was well aware that, without Peter, things would be a lot worse. “Hey.” He put his hand on Peter’s shoulder. “You’ve been doing okay?”

“Uh, yeah,” Peter said like Matt was being stupid. “I’m not hurt.”

That was debatable, but that wasn’t what Matt meant. “I mean, with…everything else.” School, friends. And… _emotions_.

“What? Yeah.” Peter ducked out from under Matt’s touch and hopped straight up onto a second-story awning; he let out a tiny grunt as he landed poorly on his leg. The thick fabric creaked under his weight.

Raising his eyebrows, Matt swung himself up more slowly via fire escape, eventually meeting Peter on the roof. “Peter…”

“No, really, I’m good. Just, like, tired.”

“You don’t have to take care of Hell’s Kitchen, you know.” The city would hurt without him, but it would survive.

Peter scoffed audibly. “I’m rolling my eyes at you, by the way. Can you tell?”

Matt tipped his head to the side.

“I mean, how many people have told _you_ that?”

Yeah, yeah.

“Bad things are happening here,” he said simply. “I can stop them.”

It was frustrating feeling so much affection for someone with so little sense of self-preservation. And yes, he knew he was a hypocrite for thinking that. “Just…take care of yourself, too.”

“Sure thing.” Peter hesitated. “Foggy’s awake.”

“How did you know?” Matt should’ve told him, he knew he felt guilt about that.

“Ella told me.”

Right. “Yeah, he’s…good.” If Peter didn’t know about the memory thing, Matt definitely didn’t want to tell him.

Peter hummed skeptically.

Then again, maybe he already knew. Ella didn’t exactly have much of a filter. “Uh, he’s not really himself yet.”

“Ella said he can’t, um, remember you.”

“Yeah.”

“And, like…” His voice changed, became uncertain. “If something happened to Ned like that…” He trailed off. “Have you talked to him?”

“Yeah.”

Peter shifted his weight awkwardly. “Are _you_ doing okay?”

Matt really shouldn’t be smiling, given the circumstances, but his mouth moved upwards anyway—the result of sheer affection for this young superhero. “I guess I don’t know?” He wanted Foggy to be himself, which included the more selfish wish that Foggy would be his best friend again. The thought of having to start from scratch was just…it was, in fact, unbearable.

What would Foggy say, if he knew about Ella’s offer?

“Peter?” Matt said suddenly. “Are you following my case?”

“Uh, yeah. I figure it’s kinda relevant to me too, right?” He paused like he thought that sounded insensitive. “And I also care about you as a person.”

Matt grinned. “Right. I just wanted to get your take on something.” After all, Peter had the vigilante perspective. “Hypothetically, how would you handle it if you were in a situation like I’m in right now and someone you cared about, but someone vulnerable, offered to get involved? If, hypothetically, it might help the case but would also put them in danger? Hypothetically.”

“You mean Ella?”

“…Yeah. I mean Ella.”

Peter was quiet for a moment, which Matt appreciated insofar as he took it to mean Peter was giving this actual thought. “Well, she’s already been targeted because of you. Would this make that much of a difference?”

“The people targeting her before were people like Vanessa Fisk and Agent Poindexter. People who really only cared about her because they cared about me. If she testifies for Daredevil, every common criminal will hate her.”

“Good point.” Matt could hear the frown in his voice. “But I feel like you’re leaving a factor out. It’s not just that it might help the case but might also get her hurt, right? It’s also that it’ll help her.”

“How?” Matt demanded.

“ _How?_ ” Peter echoed incredulously. “Because she freaking loves you and wants to feel like she’s helping you even kind of as much as you’ve helped her! _Obviously_.”

That made zero sense. “Wait, you think letting herself put herself in danger for me is _helping_ her,” he clarified doubtfully.

“That’s what I just said, man.”

He sounded way too matter-of-fact for what, if he accepted that assertion as true, amounted to a massive paradigm overhaul for Matt.

 

Marci

She’d been working with Melvin Potter for a while now. Matt too, when he wasn’t off getting himself into worse trouble. They practiced questioning Melvin, both preparing him for the questions they’d ask and helping him figure out how to deal with the harder questions Tower would ask. Matt even asked his BFF Judge Main (so Foggy referred to him, anyway) if they could visit his courtroom sometime so Melvin could practice walking up to the witness stand and speaking loudly enough to be heard across the courtroom. He actually did pretty well.

It was obvious, though, that he did not trust Marci and didn’t have much of a reason to like her except for the fact that she was Matt’s lawyer. He’d pulled her aside once, hand gripping her arm hard enough that she almost freaked out before she saw the concern in her eyes.

“You’re helping him?” he’d asked quietly. As if Matt, walking ahead of them, couldn’t hear every word.

“What do you think?”

“Just tell me.”

“Yes,” she said primly. “I’m helping him.”

Melvin had listened, thought it through, and gave a satisfied nod. He let go of her arm and walked off after Matt like nothing happened.

It was weird, but it also confirmed why he was their best shot at eliciting this particular testimony. “Please introduce yourself to the members of our jury,” she told him, standing in the center of the courtroom and holding Melvin’s gaze where he sat in the witness chair.

“Melvin Potter,” Melvin said a little nervously.

“Where are you from, Mr. Potter?”

“Right here in Hell’s Kitchen,” he said, still nervous but less so, warming up to the experience. “Born and raised.”

Good. His testimony would inevitably be a bit rocky, but Marci knew from voir dire that several jury members had also lived their entire lives in Hell’s Kitchen, and she hoped that the tiny point of commonality would go a long way towards enhancing Melvin’s credibility. “What do you do for a living, Mr. Potter?”

“I, uh…I make things. I’m good at making things.” Melvin squirmed a little on the seat. They’d drilled him on that, on sitting still and looking honest and confident, but he could never keep from shifting for very long.

“What kinds of things?”

“All kinds of things. Anything. Whatever I can make in my shop.”

“Do you have any special kind of training?”

Melvin shook his head. “Don’t need it.”

“So you just…figure it out?”

“Yeah,” he said, a bit of pride slipping into his voice.

“Did you ever make things for Wilson Fisk?”

Now Melvin screwed his eyes shut. “Yeah.”

“What did you make for him?”

“Suits. Fancy suits that’d keep him safe.”

“Why did you make him those protective suits?”

“He said he’d hurt her.” He hesitated. Sniffed. “He said he’d hurt Betsy.”

Tower stood up. “Objection, Your Honor, hearsay!”

Marci faced the judge. “I’m not offering this for the truth of the matter asserted, Your Honor, but for the effect on the listener. In this case, the witness—who believed the threat to be real.”

“I’ll advise the jury,” Laurai said. “Overruled.”

Tower sat back with a brief grimace.

Marci turned back to Melvin. “Who said he’d hurt Betsy?”

“Mr. Fisk. He threatened her, so I had to do what he told me.”

Marci nodded sympathetically. “Why didn’t you try getting help from somewhere else?”

“Like who?” Melvin shifted in his seat again. “Police? They were working for him anyway.”

“Objection, speculation!”

Marci glanced knowingly at the judge. “What makes you think the police were working for Fisk, Mr. Potter?”

“Saw them. Heard them.”

Perfect. “So if you didn’t trust the police to help you, who _did_ help?”

Melvin’s face brightened. “Daredevil.”

“How did he help you?”

“He promised he’d keep Betsy safe. Her and everyone else. Safe from Fisk and other people like him. All I had to do in return was make him a suit.”

“Like the ones you made for Wilson Fisk?”

Melvin shook his head. “He said he wanted a symbol, something to scare criminals into being good. And he wanted something to protect him.”

“What was the suit supposed to protect against?”

“Anything. Everything. People’s fists and knives and even guns, sometimes.”

“Sometimes?”

“That all depends on the range and the caliber, plus which part of the suit’s being hit.” His expression darkened. “I’ve had to repair it a bunch. He keeps getting hurt.”

“Does that mean he’s fighting people with knives and guns?”

“All the time,” Melvin sighed, like a world-weary mother of a particularly troublesome child. “I keep telling him to be careful.”

How sweet. Marci took a few steps to the left, redirecting the jury’s attention and signaling a shift in topic. “I’d like to talk about when you first met Daredevil. Can you tell us what happened?”

Melvin sat up straighter. “Yeah. He broke into my shop. Wasn’t supposed to be there.”

“Your shop?”

“Mr. Fisk made me a shop where I could make things. I don’t know how Daredevil found it.”

“When did Daredevil arrive in the shop?”

“Uh.” Melvin scratched at the side of the head. They’d been _over_ this, he _knew_ this, but apparently he still had to sort through it in his mind. “Three years ago,” he managed at last.

Marci quickly moved on. “Let’s go back in time.” She slipped into the present tense. “Are you in the shop when Daredevil arrives?”

Melvin followed her lead. “No.”

“So who’s in the shop when you get there?”

“Just Daredevil.”

“What happens when you find him?”

“I tell him he isn’t supposed to be there. ’Cause he’s not. But he won’t leave, so we have to fight.”

“Melvin, do you remember _who_ starts the fight?”

Melvin’s mouth pursed guiltily. “I have to start it. ’Cause he’s not supposed to be there.”

“Tell us about the fight.”

Melvin faltered. “Well, it, y’know, was a long time ago. But I can tell you he’s fast. He’s really, really fast.”

She’d like to get it on record that Melvin used chains against Matt, which would certainly make Matt look more sympathetic. But although Matt claimed to remember the encounter perfectly—something about using meditation for memory retention, which left her annoyed he hadn’t taught her that trick back in law school—Melvin couldn’t remember the details. “Who wins the fight?”

“He wins,” Melvin admitted reluctantly.

“How? What does he do to stop the fight?”

Melvin’s hand moved towards his own neck. “Headlock. Until I can’t breathe.”

“Until you pass out?”

A hard shake of his head. “He lets me go as soon as I stop fighting back.”

 _There_ , that was _exactly_ what she needed. She would’ve liked to have built up to the point a little more, but there was no reason to linger now and give Melvin the chance to undermine himself or Tower an excuse to object. Better to end on a high note, something that would ring in the jury’s minds all through the upcoming cross. She flashed Melvin a smile that was actually genuine and glanced up towards Lauria. “Thank you, Your Honor. That’s all.”

“Cross?” Lauria asked.

“Briefly.” Tower took his place, hands in his pockets. “You really care about Betsy, don’t you?”

“I do,” Melvin said fervently.

“You’d do anything for her?”

“Anything, yeah.”

Ugh. She’d told him not to sound biased, but either he was forgetting or didn’t understand or was too intimidated by Tower.

“And Betsy needed some legal help recently, didn’t she?” Tower pointed out.

Melvin wet his lips. “She, uh…yeah.”

“And the defendant represented her, didn’t he?”

“She didn’t do anything _wrong_.”

“But the defendant represented her, didn’t he?”

“Yeah…he made sure she didn’t have to go to jail.”

“And now you’re testifying for the defendant.”

“Yes.”

Tower let the words hang in the air just long enough to really drive home the point before stepping back. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

Ouch.

 

Jessica

Matt’s office was actually kind of nice. Not like his stark apartment; this place had a bit of life to it, even though it obviously hadn’t been used in a while. She credited Foggy.

Anyway, long story short: a little girl tried to con Matt into testifying for him, and when he didn’t play along, she switched targets to Matt’s lawyer, who apparently thought subjecting a seven-year-old to the district attorney’s attacks was a fantastic idea as long as it helped her client. Matt, Jessica gathered, was not happy about it, but also didn’t wanna be the one to tell Ella she couldn’t help. Jessica couldn’t decide if he was being a coward or if he actually believed in her.

His stipulation was to stretch Jessica’s bodyguarding capabilities to include Ella, and he’d shown her a place to hide whiskey in the church without any of the nuns noticing, so she had to agree. Which was why today she’d dragged Sister Maggie to the office to meet with Ella and Micah Vallier. But Matt hadn’t shown up yet, which made the whole meeting really awkward so far.

Micah reminded her of Luke. He was smaller, but he had the same calm demeanor mixed with a protective stance. Protective of Ella. His wary gaze clinically examined Jessica as soon as she arrived, making her instinctively stand up straighter before she wondered what the hell she was doing and slouched down again.

The front door opened and shut; Matt came in, hair windswept, glasses askew. His face looked awful with the raw skin on his cheek, and he was obviously feeling some kind of injury on his side.

“Matt!” Ella exclaimed, running towards him; he stopped her with one hand catching her shoulder, and she immediately grabbed his hand in both of hers. “Your face!”

“Thanks, I’m just trying out a new one,” he said swiftly. While her face scrunched up as she tried to work out what he’d said, he turned towards Jessica, still holding Ella’s hand. “You got your camera?”

She rolled her eyes. “Can’t you smell it?”

“Not over the smell of the whisky on your breath.”

Wait, did he tell her about the hiding place as a favor or so he’d have something to threaten her with? She cussed him out in a voice too low for anyone but him to hear.

He just grinned, although the grin faded when he turned back towards Micah and Ella.

Jessica could tell the exact moment that Ella correctly read the expression on his face. The little girl tugged on his hand, eyebrows set in a defiant line. “Marci said we could. I _wanna_ help.”

Matt’s half-smile was forced. “I know. Thank—” He cut himself off.

Jessica couldn’t say for sure, but if she had to bet, she’d say Matt couldn’t quite bring himself to thank Ella for putting herself in danger for his sake. Since Matt was probably convinced that this was endangering Ella. Since Matt was always convinced that everything was a danger—to everyone but him.

Clearing his throat, he tried again. “Thank you, Ella.”

It actually sounded like he mostly meant it.

Before Ella could respond, Micah interjected. “You were fighting.”

Matt gave a strained smile. “They didn’t exactly give me much choice.”

Micah’s eyebrows pinched together and he grabbed Matt’s elbow, disengaging him from Ella and pulling him a few feet to the side. Not far enough to be out of earshot for someone like Jessica, who made a living off spying on people. And probably not far enough to be out of earshot for a curious seven-year-old. “I mean _before_ you were in jail.”

Matt lowered his voice—another worthless effort. “Are we really doing this now?”

Micah heaved a sigh. “No. Sorry.”

“Good.”

“…But I do want to talk about this at some point.”

Jessica watched with great interest as Matt sort of ducked his head with a chagrinned expression, like he’d just been told _I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed_. Then the lawyer took a step back, raising his voice so everyone could hear his exasperation. “Look, if we’re doing this, we need to do it. Ella, meet Jessica.”

The little girl hung back, round eyes blinking up at Jessica. Jessica wasn’t an expert on little kids. Definitely not little girls, despite allegedly having been one herself. So she wasn’t sure how to interpret those blinks. Curious? Suspicious?

The silence stretched out and Matt started looking way too amused, so Jessica broke it. “Hey,” she said, a bit too loudly.

The girl glanced up at Matt, then at her dad, then back at Jessica. Her eyes narrowed. Suspicious, definitely suspicious.

Jessica huffed. Her hands were already in her pockets, which was annoying because she wanted to shove them into her pockets, which she couldn’t do because she’d already done that. “Nice to meet you too,” she muttered.

Still too amused, Matt turned and crouched in front of Ella, more graceful in that single motion than Jessica had ever been in her whole life. “Jessica’s gonna stay with us while we have our interview, all right? Just in case.”

“Is something gonna happen?”

“I don’t know,” Matt said, and kudos to him for being honest with kids, but weren’t there rules about scaring kids with adult problems?

Then again, Jessica figured this wasn’t just an adult problem anymore. Not for Ella. Besides, Ella was one of those kids who’d been exposed to adult problems long before she ever should’ve.

 

Matt

While Matt hovered over Jessica as she set up the camera in the conference room and Micah inspected the (locked) front door, Maggie bent down in front of Ella in the lobby. “Are you ready?”

Matt kept one ear on Ella when she didn’t respond with the immediate enthusiasm he was expecting. “I…think so.”

“I bet you’ll be wonderful,” Maggie said warmly.

“You sure?” Ella asked earnestly, like Maggie’s answer would decide the issue.

“Very sure.”

Ella sighed, a sigh Matt recognized to mean that she wasn’t disagreeing but that something was still bothering her.

Jessica clapped her hands together. “All right, let’s just—”

Matt grabbed her arm. “Shh, hold on.”

He heard Maggie’s hand brushed over Ella’s shoulder. “What is it, child?”

“I don’t…I don’t feel like it’s _enough_.” Ella’s tiny hands clenched into fists, her muscles trembling with frustration. She lowered her voice like she was sharing some shameful secret. “Like it’ll be enough.”

Maggie made a sympathetic sound. “Can I tell you something a very wise person said once?”

Ella nodded.

“Her name was Thérèse and she said that God does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, nor even at their difficulty, but at the love with which we do them. And it seems to me like you’re doing this out of a lot of love.”

Ella let out a tiny sound of relief, like St. Thérèse’s words and Maggie’s combined were gospel. “So you think I can help? Like _really_ help?”

“I think you can.” Maggie raised her voice slightly. “And don’t let Matt tell you otherwise.”

Ella stifled a giggle.

Matt raised his eyebrows. Point taken. He emerged from the conference room to collect Ella and get her situated in a seat that was too big for her. “Jess, can you aim the camera for me?”

Ella wiggled with new excitement. “Like a movie!”

“Kind of,” he agreed.

“And…action,” Jessica said sarcastically.

Matt cleared his throat. “I need to ask you some questions and the judge needs to hear you answer. These aren’t all the questions you’ll be asked when you testify,” he explained. “This is just so the judge knows you know how to be a witness. It’s called competency.”

“Competency,” she repeated seriously.

“Exactly. We’ll go over some of the other stuff afterwards. You ready?”

She nodded eagerly.

“Jess, we good?”

“Yeah.” Jessica stepped back and added gruffly, “She looks cute.”

Smirking to himself, Matt faced Ella. “Hi,” he began.

She stifled a giggle. “Hi. How are you?”

His lips twitched, and this wasn’t really a funny situation, but he wanted her to have as much fun as possible, given the circumstances, so he played along. “I’m doing all right. How are you?”

“I’m doing good,” she said sweetly.

“I just have a couple of questions I need you to answer, okay? First off, what’s your name?”

“You just said it, Matt,” she said, in a tone that implied he was laughably silly.

“Your full name.”

“Elizabeth Vallier,” she said without hesitation, without taking any time to think about how she used to have a different name.

“How old are you?”

“Seven!”

“Where do you live?”

If she’d answered, “With Micah and Maeva,” that would’ve been good enough. Instead, she rattled off her actual address and threw in, “With my parents!” at the end.

“Who are your parents?”

“Micah and Maeva,” she said proudly.

“Do you go to school?”

“I go to Little Hands Elementary.”

“What’s the name of your teacher?”

“Ms. Drennan.”

“What kind of things do you do at school?”

She hummed thoughtfully. “Mmmmm. We read a lot, and do worksheets, and play games. But right now I’m in summer school. Oh! Yesterday we were talking about the different states of things, like solid or liquid or gas, and we were supposed to learn that sound travels different through all of them, but Jeremy was supposed to fill up the bag with water and he filled it so much that it popped and water went all over my friend Tasha!”

Well, that was excellent proof that she knew how to tell a story, which was another component of competency. “Thanks, Ella. I need to ask some different questions now. Do you know what it means to tell the truth?”

“Yes,” she said confidently.

“Do you know what a lie is?”

She paused, possibly remembering when she’d been deposed and her dad’s attorney had tried to manipulate her into admitting that she’d lied about her dad. “Yes.”

He offered an encouraging smile. “So…what does it mean if something’s true?”

“It means it really happened,” she answered deliberately.

“Do you know what it means to make something up?”

She sighed. “I make up worlds for fun but they’re not real.”

Good enough. “Do you know what happens when you make something up or tell a lie?”

“Um, I get in trouble. Like at school. At home, Dad talks with me about how important it is that people trust each other and that my friends won’t trust me if I lie to them.”

“And do you think it’s important to tell the truth?”

“ _Obviously_ , Matt.”

“Do you know what it means to swear to tell the truth?”

“Um…I’m not supposed to swear.”

He grinned. “Do you know what it means to promise to do something?”

She nodded. “It means you’re gonna do whatever you say you’re gonna do.”

“So what do you think it means to promise to tell the truth?”

“It means I’m going to tell the truth.”

Perfect. “Thanks, Ella. That’s all the questions I have right now. You did great.”

No sooner had Jessica switched the camera off than Ella was scrambling off the chair and running towards Matt, giggling delightedly. “I did it!”

“Yeah, you did.” Down on one knee, he hugged her, feeling her smiling face pressed against his cheek. Competency wasn’t even half the battle, but he wasn’t about to douse her fire. “Thank you for doing this,” he murmured, finding that the words came more easily now.

She wrapped her arms around his neck. “I love you so much.”

Since she made no move to pull away, he kept holding her. Jessica was staring at him, mouth open, and Micah and Maggie were watching them from behind, and maybe it would’ve been awkward. But he was conveniently blind, so he ignored them and focused entirely on Ella.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guys my evidence professor showed us videos of doing that kind of competency evaluation with her little kids so we'd know what it looked like. One of them would've passed and one of them wouldn't have and it was the actual cutest thing.
> 
> (Also, I really am sorry about the chapter count spiking again. I know not everyone actually wants to read sprawling fics and I should've realized I'd need more space than I first guessed, so I probably should've just said the chapter count was unknown.)


	40. Honey, it's So Clear Now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Clear" by NEEDTOBREATHE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3u-emDRLh4). This video is like 6 minutes for some reason but it's the official audio so, cool.
> 
> I'm honestly super excited about these next few chapters so I'm just gonna...post them. :)

Marci

“Please introduce yourself to the court, spelling your last name,” Marci began.

If the nurse was nervous, it was impossible to tell. Marci wouldn’t have guessed that unflappability in an emergency room translated to unflappability in the courtroom, but it seemed she was wrong. “My name is Claire Temple,” Claire answered calmly. “T-E-M-P-L-E.”

“What do you do for a living?”

A hint of pride warmed her voice. “I’m a nurse. I work the ER at Metro-General.”

But no matter how collected Claire appeared, her credentials couldn’t stand up to a physician’s. Still, Marci was going to do her very best. “Do you mind explaining for us what kind of training qualifies you to be an ER nurse at such an important hospital?”

“Of course. I got my BSN and MSN through the accelerated program at NYU’s Rory Meyers College of Nursing. After I earned my RN license, I started working at Metro-General right away.”

“And how long have you been at Metro-General?”

“Almost fifteen years.”

“How long has your shift included the ER?”

“The entire time.”

“And what are some of your duties at the ER?”

Claire shrugged. “Honestly, we do whatever we have to. It’s New York and things are always crazy. Generally, I start the day by assessing whatever patients are currently in my zone, and discharging any if they’re ready to go, but it’s usually not long before I have to help someone else out because something insane happened in their zone.”

Marci tilted her head. “Sorry, zone?”

“Zone. It’s the rooms assigned to you.”

“Thank you for clarifying that. So what do you do when you get new patients?”

“I always have to do some level of triage as we admit them to figure out where to place them and whether they need to see a physician immediately. Either way, I’m responsible for taking care of initial injuries and filling out their charts and records.”

“And then what happens?”

Claire raised an eyebrow. “I take care of the patients. If they don’t need to see a physician, it’s my call, since I’m the advanced practice nurse on staff.”

“Advanced practice nurse?” Marci cut in. “What is that?”

Claire smiled. “The advanced practice nurse is the top of the hierarchy for nurse practitioners. My supervisor asked me to fill the role, based on my extra education and years of experience. I was happy to do it.”

“Thank you. What happens when patients don’t need to see a physician?”

“I still take care of them, or I might delegate them to another nurse depending on how severe the injuries are. I take care of the more severe injuries myself.”

Marci nodded. She was on a role, admitting Claire’s résumé into evidence and running through each of Claire’s certifications before publishing the document to the jury, then asking about Claire’s standard methodology in triaging and treating patients. She left no room for Tower to object.

“Now, Ms. Temple,” Marci said, resting one hand lightly on her hip, “what is your purpose for testifying today?”

“I’m here to talk about the injuries sustained by the criminals who encounter Daredevil.”

“How is it that you’re qualified to talk about these injuries?”

“I see them all the time in the ER.”

And with that, Marci was off, bringing back ten of the twenty-two exhibits Tower had already entered into evidence under his expert, ten that bore Claire’s signature. She placed them on the table in front of Claire. “Ms. Temple, are you familiar with these documents?”

Claire leaned forward to look. “Yes. Those are medical records from Metro-General. I signed off on all of these myself.”

“Now, do you personally know whether these individuals encountered Daredevil?”

“Of course not,” she scoffed. “We can only go off what they tell us. Or, well, sometimes the police show up asking questions, and that can be a clue. But we’re trained to heal injuries, not figure out who caused them.”

Marci paused, made sure that statement had time to really settle in with the jury, before continuing. “Do you recall whether any of the patients in the records before you were involved in any police investigation about Daredevil?”

“Um.” Claire shuffled through the documents. “Yeah, this guy. Nate Klein. I remember because I missed my lunch break talking to detectives.”

“So _assuming_ , for the sake of discussion, that at least some of Mr. Klein’s injuries came from Daredevil, what can you tell us about them?”

“Well, it’s pretty straightforward.” Claire pointed. “Mr. Klein suffered from a metacarpal fracture, commonly known as the boxer’s fracture.”

“Why is it known as the boxer’s fracture?”

“Because it’s common among inexperienced boxers.”

“Why is it common among inexperienced boxers?”

She couldn’t quite hold back a smirk. “Because they don’t know how to punch without hurting themselves.”

“Are you suggesting that Mr. Klein gave this injury to _himself?_ ”

“Objection, Your Honor,” Tower interrupted. “Counsel is leading the witness.”

“Sustained,” Lauria said, sounding irritated. Maybe someone had burnt her coffee; Matt could probably tell.

Marci kept her focus on Claire. “In your expert opinion, what led to Mr. Klein’s injury?”

Claire sat up a little straighter. “We see this kind of injury a lot from angry men who try to punch out a wall or something, so that could be the cause. If it’s true that Daredevil was involved, my guess is that Klein either took a swing at Daredevil while Daredevil was standing in front of a wall, but Daredevil ducked and Klein hit the wall by accident, or…” Her mouth curved upwards. “Maybe Klein just punched Daredevil and busted his wrist on Daredevil’s physique.”

Marci spared a glance at Matt. Predictably, a blush dusted pink across his cheeks. He really should work on losing his blush reflex, especially in court, although in this instance it was kind of cute.

“Ms. Temple, of the ten medical records you see in front of you, did the police talk to you about any others?”

“Yes. Five others.”

“And of those five, did the police talk to you about Daredevil?”

Claire shook her head. “No. The police didn’t ask any questions about Daredevil at all.”

Good. “I just have a few more questions about your medical experience. We heard previously, from another witness, about different types of injuries. In your opinion, is it possible to determine, based on injuries alone, whether the person who inflicted them is particularly skilled?”

Claire raised her eyebrows. “No. At least, not decisively.”

“But isn’t it true that you can tell by the precision of strikes or the types of, say, broken bones, whether the combatant was trained?”

“We can always guess,” Claire said dismissively. “But no. We’re not experts in forensics and we’re definitely not trained on what happens in a physical fight beyond the basics. Maybe the strikes are _precise_ because whoever was fighting studied a bunch of YouTube videos, or maybe they just got lucky. And broken bones are even less informative. There are a thousand ways to cause the same break.”

“Thank you.” Perfect. That was the hardest part of Claire’s testimony taken care of. “Ms. Temple, I’d like to talk to you now about your relationship with Matthew Murdock. Do you know Mr. Murdock?”

“Yes.”

“How did you meet?”

“I pulled him out of a dumpster.”

A surprised buzz erupted from among the jury.

Marci allowed a small smile. “Can you tell us more about that?”

Claire looked like she was going to enjoy this part. “I found a man in a mask beaten half to death in my dumpster. So I got him safely into my apartment.”

“Excuse me,” Marci said, faux-puzzled, “but what part of bringing a strange man in a mask, whom you found in a _dumpster_ , sounds safe?”

“Like I said, I worked on the criminals he found. I also ran across several of the victims he saved. Working at the ER, you learn a lot about the city. As soon as Daredevil—or the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, back then—became active, I started hearing stories at work. Stories about men who had plans to hurt people, but who were stopped by a man in the mask. And stories from innocent people who’d gotten hurt and would’ve gotten hurt worse if they hadn’t screamed. If a man in a mask hadn’t heard them. So, yeah.” Claire glanced towards the jury. “By the time I found him, I knew who he was _and_ what he was trying to do.”

“And you wanted to help him?”

“That’s why I took him in.”

“Were you able to help him?”

Claire half-grimaced. “I tried. But it’s hard to help someone who refuses to go to a hospital and won’t sit still.”

“Did he tell you why he didn’t want to go to a hospital?”

“Yes. He said the people who’d hurt him would kill everyone at the hospital to get to him.”

“And what do you mean, he wouldn’t sit still?”

Claire tucked her hair behind her ear. “You have to understand. When he came to me, he was still on mission. He’d been looking for a little boy who’d been kidnapped by a human trafficking ring, headed up by the Ranskahov brothers who were working for Wilson Fisk. And the traffickers were looking for him.”

Marci caught movement out of the corner of her eye: Tower, shifting in his seat. He wanted to object, possibly to relevance, but he knew as well as she did how slimy it would look to object to a story about a kidnapped little boy. “What do you mean?” Marci asked.

Claire’s eyes dropped briefly to the table, then locked onto Marci. “One of them came to my apartment. Pretending to be police. Fake ID and everything, asking everyone if we’d seen a masked man. I said no, but Matt, he—” She cut herself off. “Does everyone know about the senses yet?”

“We’ll hear more about it later,” Marci said smoothly. “Just tell us what you remember, Ms. Temple.”

“Right.” Claire folded her hands on the table. “So, Matt not only smells the guy through the walls or the vents or whatever, but hears him talking to his fellow bad guys on the phone. He knows the guy didn’t believe me. So he follows him out and, um, dropped a fire extinguisher on his head.”

Several members of the jury winced. Others looked shocked. One looked horrified. But one, a young woman, was leaning forward with a grimly satisfied look in her eyes.

“What happened next?”

“The fire extinguisher knocked the Russian out. I guess that was the goal, since it wasn’t like Matt could chase him down with all his injuries.”

“Back up a moment. In what ways was Mr. Murdock injured?”

Claire sighed. “Easier to say in what was he _wasn’t_ injured. He had two or three broken ribs, multiple stab wounds, and I’m still convinced he had a concussion, although he likes to pretend otherwise. So yeah, he could barely stand up. But he knew he had to—”

“Objection!” Tower interrupted. “Speculation, Your Honor. This witness can’t testify as to what the defendant knew or—”

“Sustained,” Lauria said crisply. “Ms. Temple, limit your testimony to your own experiences.”

Claire’s eyes flashed.

Not good. Matt said she had a temper. “Ms. Temple,” Marci said hurriedly. “What happened after the Russian was incapacitated?”

“We took him up to the roof and tied him up. We needed to learn where the traffickers were keeping the boy.”

“Did you learn this information?”

“Yes.”

“How did you learn this?”

Claire briefly bit her lip. “Well, Matt…Matt told the Russian to answer his questions. He told me later that he can tell if someone’s lying by hearing their heartbeats—”

The jury exchanged startled looks, some of them shooting furtive glances towards Matt, who appeared as blind and oblivious as ever.

“—so when the Russian lied, Matt punched him,” Claire continued. “It only took one or two hits for the Russian to start telling the truth.”

That was accurate, but not the full story. But aside from Marci, only three people knew that story, and only two of them were left alive. Marci moved along. “What happened after you learned where the boy was?”

“The, um…the Russian threatened Matt. And he kept talking about what they were gonna do to the little boy. That was—”

“Objection, hearsay,” Tower interrupted.

“We’re not using this statement for the truth of the matter asserted,” Marci argued swiftly, “but for the effect on the listener. This testimony provides the context for Mr. Murdock’s subsequent behavior.”

“Overruled,” Lauria ordered.

Marci looked at Claire, then tilted her head slightly towards the jury. “What did the Russian say?”

Claire got the hint, turning to face the jury so they could read the truth in her eyes. “He said Matt would be lucky if they killed him first, so he wouldn’t have to watch what they did to the boy.”

Marci lowered her voice. “And then what happened?”

“And then…” Claire’s lips formed a thin, harsh line. “And then Matt threw him off the roof.”

The jury looked shocked. Some had narrowed their eyes, others looked nervous. The young woman who’d been nodding before gave another nod, smaller this time, but just as firm. There were tears in her eyes.

“He landed in the same dumpster, in a coma,” Claire went on quickly. “Then Matt took off after the boy.”

“Did you see Mr. Murdock again that night?”

“Yes. He came back to me after he’d rescued the boy. I don’t know how he did it—I don’t know how he managed to crawl back to me, and I _definitely_ don’t know how he managed to rescue the boy. Like I said, he could barely stand up. But he did it. I patched him up again.”

Marci moved a few paces to the left, signaling a shift in topic. “Did you continue to interact with Mr. Murdock after that night?”

Her lips formed an amused smile. “Yeah. He’d crash through my window once or twice a week, bleeding or concussed or something. Eventually, he got my number so he could call whenever he needed help.”

“And you were okay with this arrangement?”

“I became a nurse to help people,” she said calmly. “He’s helping people. If I help him, I’m helping people.”

“Was there ever a time when Mr. Murdock helped you?”

“Yes.” Claire closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. “The Russian woke up and told the others about me. They came for me, took me to a garage.”

“Can you describe the garage?”

She nodded. “It was big. Echoey. Full of taxis that were being refurbished or something.”

“Tell us more about the taxis. Did they have a name on them?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember the name?”

“Yes. Veles taxis.”

“Your Honor, permission to approach the witness with what has been pre-marked for identification as defense’s exhibit two.”

“Granted,” Lauria said.

Marci briskly showed the document to Tower before placing it on the table in front of Claire. It was a picture taken by an NYPD investigator’s testimony during Fisk’s trial into evidence—a picture of the garage where the Russians had run their operation. “Ms. Temple, do you recognize this picture?”

“Yes,” Claire said, her voice chilled.

“What is this picture?”

“It’s, uh…it’s the garage. Where the Russians took me.”

“Does this picture fairly and accurately depict the garage?”

“Yes,” she said more quietly. “It does.”

“Your Honor, the defense moves to admit defense’s exhibit two into evidence.”

“No objection,” Tower said.

“So admitted,” Lauria ordered.

Marci stepped back from the table, leaving Claire alone with the picture. “Ms. Temple, can you describe the picture to the jury?”

Claire cleared her throat. “Yes. It’s…it’s of the garage.” She held up the image. “You can see that it’s better lit here, but it’s still dark. And these…” She pointed. “These are the taxis.”

“What is the name written on the taxis in that picture?”

“Veles,” she said.

“Let’s go back to that time in the garage. Are you sitting or standing?”

“Sitting.”

“Are you restrained?”

“Yes. They duct taped my hands and feet together.”

“What do you feel?”

“Cold,” she said quietly. “And pain.”

“Where are you in the garage?”

“Here, ish.” She pointed. “In the center of the garage.”

“Where are the Russians?”

“They’re all around me. With guns.” She swallowed. “But one…one is standing right in front of me. He’s got a baseball bat.”

“What does he do with the baseball bat?”

Her eyes hardened. “He swings it right at me, but at the last second he hits the taxi. Breaks the window.”

“What does he want?”

“He wants me to tell them Matt’s name. When I don’t, they, um…well, they hurt me.”

“I’m sorry,” Marci said, softening her voice. “I understand this might be difficult to talk about, but I need to ask just a few more questions. Do you tell the Russians his name?”

“No. Matt hadn’t told me his name yet, so I couldn’t have.”

“What happens, since you can’t give these men the information they wanted?”

Something dangerous stole across Claire’s expression, another hint that this woman had gone through things Marci had only experienced in nightmares. “All of a sudden, the lights shut off. The man who goes to check the breaker doesn’t come back. The Russians open fire, and I see them through the muzzle flashes, dropping like flies.” Her eyes darted across the room to rest on the man at the defense table, listening to her story with tension in his jaw, like he was as angry hearing it retold as he’d been in the moment. “It’s Matt. He saved me.”

Satisfied, Marci stepped back. “Thank you. Nothing further, Your Honor.”

Lauria made a dispassionate note. “Cross?”

“Yes, thank you.” Tower adjusted his tie. Marci wasn’t sure, but she thought he looked a little nervous. Maybe he wasn’t quite sure what he’d be able to accomplish? “Ms. Temple, you currently work at Metro-General.”

 Claire’s answer came a bit too fast, like she was in battle. “Yes.”

“And you testified earlier that you’ve been there for almost fifteen years.”

“Yes.”

“But you neglected to mention that you actually quit two years ago.”

Claire sat up straighter. “I came back.”

“After you quit.”

Her jaw visibly tightened. “Yes.”

“You quit because you were reprimanded for bringing five patients into the hospital without following procedure to check them in.”

“I quit because I refused to let the hospital ignore the _real_ victims by worrying about its _board_ , and I refused to be part of a coverup when my friend was murdered!”

Claire, _no_.

“Ms. Temple,” Tower reiterated, “you quit because—”

Marci stood up. “Your Honor, I object to the relevance of this testimony, and would also argue that it goes far beyond the scope of direct.”

“It concerns her credibility,” Tower retorted.

“Overruled,” Lauria ordered.

“Your Honor—” Marci persisted.

“Counselor, you’ve been overruled.”

Marci sat down. Perfect. This was what happened when you brought in a witness without enough time to prep them. She picked up a pen and squeezed it under the table.

“Redirecting you back to my question, Ms. Temple,” Tower said, “you quit because you were—”

“Because my friend _died_ when the hospital was attacked,” Claire spat. “By _ninjas_.”

Marci stabbed the pen into Matt’s leg under the table. He barely flinched.

“Your Honor,” Tower said plaintively, “witness is being non-responsive.”

Lauria leaned over her desk. “Ms. Temple, you need to answer the questions Mr. Tower asks as simply as possible. Am I clear?”

Claire glowered. “Crystal.”

“Ms. Temple,” Tower began again, “you quit because you brought five patients into the hospital without following procedure to check them in, _isn’t that right?_ ”

“No,” Claire said. “I quit because I refused to be part of a cover-up.”

Tower moved closer to her, like he thought his physical presence would intimidate her. “But you _were_ reprimanded.”

“Yes, all right. They put a note in my file. We all get those.”

“And you brought the patients into the hospital without following procedure because of Daredevil.”

Claire froze. “What?”

“Object,” Matt hissed under his breath.

To what? Tower didn’t know that for sure. He couldn’t, there was no proof. No record. But it was a good guess, after Claire was stupid enough to bring up _ninjas_.

“Answer the question, please. You brought those five patients into the hospital without following procedure because of _Daredevil_.”

“Well, yes,” Claire said sharply. “He rescued them. They were _dying_. I had to help them.”

Matt tapped her leg. “Marci, _object_.”

“To _what?_ ” she whispered, trying to split her attention between him and Tower, who was already asking the next question.

“I need you to back up for a moment, Ms. Temple,” Tower said. “Daredevil rescued these patients?”

“Yes,” Claire said defiantly.

“Anything,” Matt was whispering. “Just slow them down.”

“And he brought them straight to you?” Tower pressed.

Marci realized just slightly too late where Tower was going with this. She shot to her feet. “Objection, Your Honor! Relevance?”

“Your Honor,” Tower argued, “these questions go directly to Ms. Temple’s credibility.”

Yes, they did, and Marci knew that as well as Tower, but she needed _Claire_ to know that before she dug herself deeper into a hole. “Your Honor, I fail to see how this goes towards credibility.”

Tower, bless him, spelled it out. “Your Honor, if I may respond? I’m demonstrating that Ms. Temple’s relationship with Daredevil caused her to violate company policy at her job. The jury should see the extent of her loyalty towards him and decide if she’s testifying today in pursuit of the truth or simply  because of that loyalty.”

“I agree,” Lauria said, surprising no one. “Counselor, you’re overruled.”

Marci sat again and held her breath.

“Let me ask again,” Tower said. “Daredevil brought these patients straight to you?”

Hesitating, Claire glanced briefly at Marci. “He…brought them straight to the hospital.”

“To you,” Tower insisted.

“To all of us who were on staff that night,” she countered.

Marci breathed a sigh of relief.

“But as the advanced practice nurse, you were ultimately responsible for admitting these patients without following procedure.”

“I saw people who needed help. It’s that simple.”

“But that wasn’t the only day you violated procedure to help Daredevil, was it?”

Claire stiffened. “Excuse me?”

Tower’s voice sharpened; he looked like a dog latched onto a scent. “You’ve violated procedure to help Daredevil before.”

Had she? Marci tried not to visibly tense. She should know this, she should’ve uncovered this when she was prepping Claire; lack of time was no excuse but maybe her husband forgetting her name was a better excuse.

“Ms. Temple,” Tower started to say.

“I haven’t been written up for anything like that,” Claire said at last, confidently.

“You mean you haven’t been caught.”

“…No?”

Tower raised his voice. “Ms. Temple, for the record, have you broken policy on any other occasion to help Daredevil? Yes or no.”

She tensed, licked her lips, set her shoulders back, and said, “If you mean that sometimes helping people means not waiting on a bureaucracy, then yes.”

“Thank you.” Tower stepped back. “I’m done with this witness.”

 

Foggy

He had to hear the same facts over and over until it sunk in and fit together into a story that made sense. It _didn’t_ make sense. Did it? He couldn’t figure out if he was surprised or not. He just knew he was scared. And a little bit indignant. Like, what right did that guy have to shoot him like that? Did he not realize how disruptive it was?

Anyway.

First things first. He’d been shot. In the head. Which was terrifying enough by itself without the fact that he couldn’t _remember_ , had no way to verify except for the atrocious haircut he’d gotten. (He couldn’t think of any justification under the sun for this haircut but for getting shot. So there was that.)

He’d been shot in the head while hanging out with Matt, his used-to-be best friend, and Peter Parker, who was apparently _Spiderman_.

He’d survived because webbing was apparently excellent at keeping your blood and brains from sliding out of a hole in your head.

And now Matt was on trial for a whole list of things that Foggy didn’t even know about, and Marci, who was Foggy’s _wife_ as well as Matt’s lawyer, was trying keep him from sabotaging his own case and failing. She was also trying to keep Foggy out of it.

“You need to concentrate on healing,” she said when he asked for the third time if he could just look over a couple depositions, no big deal. She’d come back from court visibly frazzled and refused to talk about it.

“I feel like healing happens better when I’m not thinking about it, you know? Like how water never boils when you’re watching it?”

She sighed. “I’m not supposed to stress you out.”

The fact that the case was technically his best friend’s case didn’t mean much if he couldn’t remember his best friend, right? “I promise not to stress out. I’ll be very objective.”

She just flipped through another page of…exhibits, depositions, whatever, Foggy didn’t even _know_ , and didn’t answer.

“Marci, come on.” His voice took on a pleading tone and he had no idea if it would work on her, but he might as well start figuring that stuff out now in case it never came back on its own. “You’re overwhelmed. Let me help.”

Her eyes flashed at him. “It’s a violation of confidentiality.”

He sat back, stung.

“At least, unless Matt hires you,” she muttered, dropping her eyes back to her files.

Foggy stared up at the ceiling. Right, even though they were married, she was right. Technically. Wasn’t she? He couldn’t quite remember the particularities of that rule, but…yeah, that sounded right. And that was fine. Why should he even care that Matt hadn’t hired him? Foggy wouldn’t hire _himself_ right now, not with his brain all…off.

Hard to tell what was off, exactly, aside from the memory thing. And the math thing, although he still thought that was nothing new. But Marci mentioned once that he had a hard time thinking ahead, which was just _swell_. Couldn’t remember the past, couldn’t plan ahead. At least Foggy was pretty sure he had a good enough grip on the present.

But how would he know?

“You know,” he told the weird beige stain on the ceiling, “my mom wanted me to be a butcher.” The undignified, unbeautiful snort from Marci’s corner of the room made him smile. “Would you still have married me if I’d been a butcher?”

“Definitely not.”

Oh. Foggy frowned at the stain.

There was a rustling sound, and suddenly the bed shifted under him as Marci sat on the edge, settling her hand on his chest. “And I would’ve missed out on the only man who ever wanted to help me become a better person.”

It took him a second to realize she was talking about _him_. “I did?”

“You don’t remember,” she said softly, “but I got the internship you and Matt turned down. I worked at Landman and Zack.”

The name rang a bell, but only one single bell. “What did they do?”

“What _didn’t_ they do? But it was all to benefit whichever party paid them the most. Never about truth or justice or innocence. You saw through it. I got sucked right in.”

Foggy couldn’t make that version of Marci match the version staying up tirelessly working on Matt’s case in exchange for his help picking out a wedding cake. (Foggy still didn’t understand that part, and Marci wouldn’t explain.) “I feel like you’re not the kind of person to work somewhere like that.”

She looked affectionate and sad at the same time, and it felt like a punch in the gut that Foggy couldn’t just fix things—fix everything—for her. “Thanks to you. You showed me how bad it really was, and you showed me a better way to be a lawyer.” Her fingers played idly with the collar of his shirt. “And then you helped me get a new job. A better job, we thought. And eventually, you came to work with me, too. Until Matt came back.”

“Came back?” That part didn’t make sense, but the rest of it maybe did. The facts were intersecting, merging into something that felt more like history. A fancy office flashed across his vision. Marci was there, laughing at him for preferring cheap takeout that tasted like…home, kind of.

“And even though _one_ of us has to get paid in something more substantial than chickens, I’m really glad you went back to Nelson and Murdock.”

“You are?”

“It’s where you’re supposed to be.” With that, she cupped his cheek and leaned forward to kiss him.

The touch of her hand, the sound of her voice, the smell of her shampoo and perfume—it didn’t snap into place, not all of it, but she felt suddenly familiar. She _was_ suddenly familiar. He gently pushed her back so he could stare at her. “Marci?”

She froze.

“Marci, I—I think I remember?”

She didn’t leap for joy. Her eyes narrowed. “Remember what?”

“Marci Stahl-Nelson, born November eleventh. The smartest graduate from our class at Colombia, even though I think I actually got a better grade in civil procedure? Wears ugly fuzzy socks when she thinks I’m not looking. My—”

He was trying to triumphantly declare that she was his wife, but suddenly his mouth was otherwise engaged. The pressure of her lips was as warm and familiar as ever. They were both to blame for the tears on his cheeks.

Finally, she pulled back, laughing a little and still crying. A bit of mascara was clumped under her eyes.

“We got married!” he announced. Then he blinked. “We were gonna get a puppy. Did you get the puppy?”

“Wanted to wait for you for that. Matt and I picked out the perfect cake, though, remember? I told you.”

Matt. Matt. Ghosts of memories flicked around his head. A cane propped in the corner of their dorm, a pillow thrown at his face with startling accuracy from across the room when he snored too loud. Wandering around late at night, tipsy enough that Matt laughed without stifling it.

A man in black, covered in blood?

Huh. One of these things was not like the others.

“Foggy Bear?” Marci asked, concern jumping out at him from her green eyes.

“I love you,” he burst out, simply because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d said it.

“I know. I love you, too.” She kissed his forehead, unhurried and sweet.


	41. You See Through All My Fears

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Ocean Wide" by the Afters (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1nNQ6uVTmY).  
> Um, extra long chapter but I think it's worth it?

Foggy

He was lucky. He knew that.

He could form new memories, he had voice inflection, he could even string whole sentences together. Lucky. The gaps in his memory were fairly limited and he’d already brought back most of his memories of Marci. Not everything, not one hundred percent, but now if she mentioned something he couldn’t remember, he would just ask and she would explain and usually the information would fit nicely into his puzzle.

But he was starting to notice something. Even though he could carry a conversation, he couldn’t keep talking on his own very well. He didn’t try all that often, which was maybe why Marci hadn’t realized. The other day, for example, he got stuck trying to explain to one of the nurses why he really should go home ASAP. He had at least four separate reasons for going home sooner, but he got stuck on, “Home is closer.”

And that was when he realized that just because he could speak in full sentences didn’t mean his brain was as good with words as it used to be.

Needless to say, the doctors hadn’t been persuaded.

Foggy was trying not to think about it. He wasn’t sure if Marci had noticed it yet and he felt a bit guilty for not telling her about it in case she hadn’t, but he didn’t want to worry her if it was nothing. He ended up with a vague idea that he’d tell her at some point.

But when she came into his room the next day because she was considering adding some new questions to Matt’s deposition and wanted to work through them without him looking over her shoulder (figuratively), Foggy felt like his _problem_ , whatever it was, was tattooed across his forehead.

He grabbed for the first conversation topic he could think of. “Hey Marci, who’s Daredevil?”

She froze.

He kept hearing the name—in whispered conversations right outside the door, or echoing through his dreams. He’d asked one of the other nurses, who shot him a panicked look and mumbled something too fast and too slow for Foggy’s addled brain to catch, then darted out of the room.

Vigilante. He remembered that word. And something to do with Karen, which was alarming. And big, scary criminals. And Matt, which was also alarming. But none of it made sense.

“Marci?” he prompted.

Setting her folders on her chair in the corner, she sat on the edge of his bed and pushed his hair back from his forehead. “I can’t tell you.”

He felt his eyes widen. “Why not?”

She pulled her hand back and bit her lip. “You’ll find out eventually, I promise.”

That wasn’t an answer. Foggy tried to sit up straighter. “I remember he’s a vigilante. But no one will give me anything more than that.”

“Good,” she muttered under her breath.

Wait, what? She was _intentionally_ keeping him in the dark? His intestines felt suddenly cold. “Marci, what gives? Who’re you protecting here?”

“You.” Honesty rang through her words. “Foggy Bear, you wouldn’t want me to tell you.”

“I obviously want you to. In case you couldn’t tell, this is me wanting you to.”

“I’ll—I’ll call Matt, okay? You can ask him yourself.”

So Matt _was_ related! But Foggy’s triumph at having sort of remembered something shriveled in the face of Marci’s desperate attempts to keep secrets. “You’re his lawyer. Just give me the facts.”

Her eyes flashed warningly. “No.”

“ _Why not?_ ”

“It wouldn’t be _fair_ ,” she snapped at last.

He felt his forehead crease in bewilderment as he repeated himself: “Why not?”

She chewed on her lip and tapped her foot and twisted the ring on her left hand and generally stalled for almost five minutes straight. Foggy propped himself up in his bed and tried to glare. It was hard to glare at someone so perfect. Still, he gave it his best shot.

Finally, she slumped a little in her seat. “It’s _your_ friendship,” she admitted heavily. “I couldn’t live with myself if I said something that—that got in the way of that.”

Still cold, Foggy’s guts now felt shriveled-up with dread. “I just want the truth,” he whispered.

“Don’t put that on me,” she whispered back. “Please.”

This whole time, throughout his whole recovery, she hadn’t asked for anything. Not once. Even though she must be just as scared and almost as confused as he was. Suddenly, Foggy felt like the worst person on the planet.

He stared down at his blanket. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

Her hand ran through his hair. “It’s okay. I’ll call him right now, all right? And you can ask him whatever you want. Just…Foggy, when you talk to him, try to…”

She didn’t finish the sentence. He glanced up to see her biting her lip again, some silent struggle written across her face. “What?” he asked.

“No,” she said softly. “I really shouldn’t say anything.”

 

Matt

He supposed this was a kindness. Marci could easily have tried to tell Foggy herself, which Matt expected would go one of two ways. She might tell Foggy the whole story, as much as she could, in which case Foggy would, if memory served, walk away on the spot. Or maybe he’d get lucky and she’d downplay things a bit, enough to put Matt and Foggy in some kind of relationship purgatory. But that would only last until Foggy filled in the blanks, at which point he’d walk away anyway. The purgatory option would at least give Matt the chance to laugh with Foggy a few more times, but it would also make the walking away sting that much more.

This way, at least, Matt could take his best shot at avoiding both and finding some mythical third option where he told Foggy everything and Foggy maybe, possibly, understood.

He’d understood before. Sitting by that dumpster outside of the restaurant after Dex attacked Foggy and Marci. Foggy had said he _got_ it, and he hadn’t been lying. So it was possible.

Even if it didn’t work, at least Matt could do Foggy the courtesy of being honest, which might not be enough to save their friendship but was the bare minimum of what Foggy deserved.

 

It was late by the time he made his way to the hospital. He really had no good reason for waiting so long to go there, except that doing literally anything else seemed like a better idea. So he took care of some things for the case and spent about an hour listening to comparisons of different cribs online, even though he remembered absolutely nothing of what he’d learned, before finally telling himself to stop being a coward.

Still, he was half hoping Foggy had fallen asleep by the time Claire finally guided him to Foggy’s room.

She stopped outside, turned Matt around to face her, and ran her hands down his arms. “I’m proud of you, you know.”

He arched an eyebrow. He knew what she meant, but her pride was a bit too heavy to accept right now. “Proud of me for visiting my best friend in the hospital? I think I should be insulted.”

“Wasn’t that long ago that you were refusing to do the same thing,” she pointed out.

“Claire, I was in the suit.”

“That wasn’t the reason.”

“I, uh…” He shifted his weight. “I never thanked you. For everything you said that night.”

She ducked her head and he felt the warmth of her blush. “I dunno, I was pretty sarcastic. Judgy. I probably could’ve handled that better.”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference,” he admitted.

She lifted her chin. “Well, you’re doing it now, so…”

“Yeah.”

“Hey.” She leaned forward to kiss his temple. “I’m saying a prayer to St. John for you.”

The patron saint of friendship. Matt wasn’t sure what to say to convey his thanks while also ending the conversation immediately before he became too emotional.

She got it, though. She always did. “Anyway, have fun,” she said lightly, pulling back and sauntering away down the hall.

How did he get so lucky?

Adjusting his hold on his cane, he reached for the handle to Foggy’s door. Turned it. Stepped inside and let the door fall shut behind him.

“Hi, Foggy.”

“Hey.” Foggy sat up in bed. He had a notebook and a pen beside him. Because he was afraid he’d forget the important details? Or because he was treating this like a deposition?

“So,” Matt began, gripping his cane. “Marci said—”

“Marci didn’t say _anything_.”

“I’ll explain everything.” That was maybe too bold a promise. “I’ll explain everything I can.”

“I’ll hold you to that. Sit down, will you? You look like you’re about to pass out.”

Great. Matt’s lips twitched grimly as he lowered himself into the nearest chair. It squeaked. He scooted it a bit closer on reflex, simply because it was impossible to be in the same room as Foggy and not want to be closer, before it occurred to him that Foggy maybe didn’t want that right now and definitely _wouldn’t_ want that in a few minutes.

He cleared his throat. “So, uh…you were asking about Daredevil.” At Foggy’s nod, he went on. He’d thought about how to phrase this, how to make himself sound as sympathetic as possible before getting around to the real honesty. But his best advocacy wouldn’t be able to prevent Foggy’s inevitable vitriol. Better not to prolong the experience—for either of them. “I’m Daredevil.”

Foggy’s breathing caught. “What, the vigilante?”

Matt tangled his fingers together over his knees. “What do you remember?”

“Just…pieces. So…you fight crime? But, like, _how?_ ”

That was classic Foggy, not pulling any punches. “However it takes.”

“Right, that’s not disturbing at all,” Foggy muttered. “Are you even really blind?”

Matt tasted copper on the back of his tongue, felt the phantom of the tear in his guts from Nobu, heard the echo of Foggy’s voice. _Just tell me one thing, Matt. Are you even really blind?_

The tone was softer this time. Curious, not yet betrayed.

“Completely,” Matt answered. “No light perception. It’s just…” Maybe he shouldn’t mention heartbeats. Or maybe he should share it quickly, like ripping a band-aid off. “My other senses are enhanced. Very enhanced. I can smell your sweat and hear your heartbeat.”

There.

The heartbeat in question was thudding harder and faster in Foggy’s chest. “How?”

Matt wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by that, but he didn’t want Foggy to think he was being evasive, so he started at the beginning. “Car accident and a chemical spill.”

“Car accident?” Foggy’s voice twisted in confusion. “Murdock…Murdock. You—wait, you mean you’re _Matt_ Murdock?”

Matt’s stomach flipped. “You remember?”

“I read about you when I was a kid! You saved that old dude!”

Right. Childhood memories still intact, that was all. Matt tried his best not to radiate dejection. “Yeah, I guess…”

“Dude, is that really what you tell people whenever they ask how you lost your sight? You just say you were in a _car accident?_ ”

“It’s the truth,” Matt stammered.

Foggy snorted. “You, my friend, were a _hero_. Next time you start talking about your, uh, what’s it called…” He was quiet for a second. “Your tragic backstory,” he said a second later. “At least tell the whole story. _Car accident_ , Matt, geeze. You saved someone’s life!”

Matt tried not to bask in the praise. It wasn’t real; Foggy just thought he was a celebrity. He hurried to continue the story. “But the chemicals, they heightened my senses. And it—it was too much. Especially after my dad, and I couldn’t—”

“Your dad?” Foggy blurted out.

An ice pick lodged itself in Matt’s stomach.

“What…” But it was obvious Foggy had figured it out. He was smart like that. His voice softened, now painfully polite. “I’m sorry.”

Matt wanted to brush it off; after all, it was a long time ago. And it wasn’t like Foggy ever even knew Jack. But all of a sudden, all Matt could think about was the fact that until three seconds ago, Foggy had thought of Matt as a guy whose dad was still alive. And Matt irrationally wished Foggy could keep thinking that.

“Sorry,” Foggy said again, like he knew he’d just triggered something. Matt couldn’t help wondering if Foggy was still fluent in reading the emotions on his face, even under the glasses.

Why was he still wearing the stupid glasses?

“Anyway, that’s when Stick found me. My teacher,” he clarified. “An old man, blind like me. Well, no radiation that I know of, but he’s trained so he can sense things almost as well as I can. He taught me to manage my senses, and to fight.”

“An old man named Stick,” Foggy murmured. “Isn’t that—”

“The plot of kung fu?” Matt finished for him. “Basically.”

The bed squeaked under Foggy. “How did you—”

“We’ve, uh…” Matt pressed his lips together. “We’ve had this conversation before. Kind of.”

“Oh,” Foggy said, and Matt couldn’t read his tone or inflection or anything, had no idea what Foggy was thinking. “How, um, did that go?”

“We got through it.”

That didn’t answer Foggy’s question, obviously, but Foggy let him get away with it.

“So, Stick. He taught me that sight was a distraction, showed me what I could do with my senses. And he taught me to fight. Said he was preparing me for a war…” Matt waved his hand, hoping to downplay it. “He—”

“A _war?_ ”

“It never made any sense and he didn’t explain until I was older. Don’t worry about it, it’s over.”

“But…how old were you, back then?”

Matt grimaced. “Ten. It wasn’t—”

“He was training you for _war_ when you were _ten?_ ”

“It was martial arts,” Matt insisted, hating the way he sounded like he was begging. (He was, though. Begging Foggy to drop it.) His voice sharpened. “And you’ve already convinced me how terrible that was, so you don’t need to do it again.”

Foggy deflated. “Sorry.”

“No, I…” Matt closed his eyes, stifling the anger building in his own chest towards himself. He was doing this all wrong. “I appreciate your concern.”

Now he sounded like a robot.

“…Noted,” Foggy said uncertainly. “I’ll…keep feeling concern.”

Until the concern was replaced with hurt and betrayal and fury. “As I was saying, Sick left after less than a year, so I—”

“Why’d he leave so fast?” Foggy interrupted again.

“What?”

“Were you ready? For whatever war he was talking about?”

Matt laughed darkly before he could think better of it. “Nowhere close.”

“Uh-huh,” Foggy said suspiciously. Zeroing in on a hole in the testimony. “So why’d he leave?”

No, Matt didn’t want to go there. Matt wanted to wriggle out of the truth, and it wasn’t like Foggy would know the difference. Not yet, anyway. Maybe. Matt tensed his jaw. “He left because I cared about him too much.”

Foggy took his time processing this. Then he shook his head. “That makes no sense.”

Matt shrugged. “He, uh, he just had this thing about letting people in. Thought that if you cared about people, you’d end up hurt because of them. Or they’d be hurt because of you. Either way, you wouldn’t be effective.”

“He told you that? When you were a kid?”

“He just wanted to make sure I learned the lesson,” Matt whispered.

“Did you?”

Matt hesitated. Wet his lips. Wished he could escape from under the weight of Foggy’s stare. Settled for ducking his head a little. “Yeah.”

Foggy nodded slowly. Accepting this, filing it away along with his other measly handful of facts that made up what he now knew of Matt Murdock. But Matt didn’t want these facts to be the only ones he knew; he wanted Foggy to know how much he loved Thurgood Marshall and what his favorite drinks were and his opinion on cilantro and Star Wars. He wanted Foggy to know that he’d asked Matt to be his best man at his wedding and he wanted Foggy to know about their stupid avocado joke.

He opened his mouth, about to launch into all of that even thought it was completely off-topic, but Foggy beat him to it.

“So that means you, what, just kept training? All those years since Stick?”

The déjà vu was sickening. Would they have to relive every single moment from that entire awful day? Except Foggy was in no shape to walk out, so Matt would have to do that part for him. He’d thought, at the time, that absorbing every barb of Foggy’s (justified, totally justified) fury while his head still spun from pain and blood loss _must_ be the penance he deserved.

He licked his lips. “I’m helping people, Foggy. Every night when I go out—”

“No, I get that,” Foggy interrupted, and…that was interesting, his heartbeat was steady. “Just—hang on. Lemme work through this.”

Franklin Nelson on the case, gathering facts. Matt just couldn’t tell if he was for the prosecution or the defense. Outside, the sun was setting fast, the outer walls of the hospital growing cooler.

“How did what’s-his-name, your mentor, even get to you?” Foggy asked at last. “Didn’t you have…family or something? I mean, not your, um, dad, but…”

“Uh—no,” Matt stammered. “The nuns asked him to—”

“Nuns?” Foggy yelped.

Oh, no. It was bad enough that Matt was dumping everything about his dad and Stick and his senses on Foggy right now. Did he really have to let Foggy in on the fact that he’d been raised in an orphanage? Did they have to have that conversation _now?_

“It doesn’t matter,” Matt managed.

“Like hell,” Foggy snapped.

Matt clenched his fists, felt distinct spikes of pain where his fingernails dug into his palms. “Foggy. Can I just—I’m trying to explain Stick, can we just focus on—”

“And I’m trying to understand _you_ , and _nothing_ makes sense to me right now!”

Right. Foggy was the one whose world had shattered. Matt was being selfish.

Foggy slumped back against his pillows. “Sorry, man. I get you probably don’t wanna talk about all this, and believe me, it means a lot that you’re trying. Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Matt said quietly, automatically, trying to shove out the echo of Micah’s comments about how Stick probably liked to find kids who didn’t have family, trying to ignore the possibility that maybe the orphanage mattered more to this conversation than he thought.

“Just because I got shot in the head doesn’t mean I should push you, huh?”

He was, miraculously, not being sarcastic. “It’s fine,” Matt repeated. “What…what did you want to know about the nuns?”

Foggy sat there in silence for about a full minute while Matt’s mind raced to figure out what he was supposed to say. “Let’s back up. So I get why you run around punching bad guys—I mean, _I_ wouldn’t do that, I don’t think—” He stopped suddenly. “ _Have_ I done that?”

Matt felt his lips twitch despite himself at the thought of Foggy chasing down criminals. “Not to my knowledge.”

“Okay, good.” The silence came back, and Matt wasn’t sure why, whether Foggy was bracing himself or preparing his next question or trying to remember what they were even talking about. “So,” Foggy started to say, then coughed.

Matt sprang to his feet. There was a bottle of water with a straw by the bed, but he didn’t want Foggy to reach for it.

But Foggy’s grip on the bottle was firm when Matt handed it to him. “How’d you know it was there?”

Matt returned to his chair, rubbing his hands over his pants. “Scent.”

“What does _water_ smell like?”

“No, uh…you. From the straw.” Matt hurried on. “And, you know, sound travels differently through water, so…”

“Huh,” Foggy muttered, and spent about a minute sipping thoughtfully through the straw. “So anyway, that doesn’t explain how you were still so good at fighting. If Stick left after less than a year, you must’ve been doing it all through high school, and college, and…huh.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “Law school. Isn’t that, uh, three years or something?”

Matt hesitated. “I wasn’t…fighting, back then. I didn’t start fighting until later, after we graduated.” He decided, quickly, not to share the story about the little girl he’d heard. “Before that, I was just…practicing.”

“Why?”

“Because it feels good. It’s not like I can just go for a run, Foggy. Or take up a martial arts class.”

Foggy made a doubtful noise. “I’m really s’posed to believe all that was just about getting in a good workout.”

Matt’s glasses felt heavy on his nose and ears. He should just take them off. But he didn’t want to, not until after Foggy knew the whole story. Not until Matt knew how Foggy was going to respond. “No, you’re right. It felt good to…” He aimed his eyes at the corner of the room like he’d see the perfect explanation there, shining and _clean_. “To know that if Stick came back, he wouldn’t be disappointed.”

“You still cared what he thought? After he left you like that?”

The words were as raw as his voice when he whispered: “I don’t think I’ll ever really stop.”

Silence fell between them. Foggy shifted like he felt uncomfortable. But he didn’t start lecturing Matt like he might’ve done before. Didn’t ask Matt to list all the criminal charges Stick would face if someone had dragged him to court before he passed.

“He was, though,” Matt offered at last, like the ugly truth was some kind of gift. “Disappointed. When he came back. He didn’t stay long.”

“When was that?”

“Not long after we started our firm together. He showed up when I was tracking down Fisk’s money man.”

“Wait.” Foggy scrunched up his face. “So he showed up after you were back to—to Daredeviling, or whatever?” He paused for at least thirty seconds, getting his thoughts in order. “Why would he be disappointed?” he asked at last. “Weren’t you doing exactly what he wanted?”

“I lived in a fancy apartment with silk sheets,” Matt scoffed. He clenched his jaw. “And I had you.”

“Why would Stick care about—”

“Because _I_ cared about you,” he interrupted. “To Stick, you’d always be a—a distraction.”

Foggy didn’t say anything to that. Thinking. “Okay, lemme make sure I get it. Tracking all this is kind of not my strength right now, you know?”

Swallowing, Matt nodded.

“You’re blind but have superpowers which you use to fight crime thanks to training you got from a creepy old man. But you’re also a lawyer, right? So you know that all of that is, y’know, super illegal.”

Matt shrugged. “Yeah, that kinda caught up to me.”

“Wow.” Foggy let out a little laugh. “This is actually insane.”

“I know.” Matt exhaled slowly, and waited. And waited. But Foggy didn’t say anything else. He just set his water bottle aside and reached for a stress ball. Matt got up, gave it to him, and sat back down. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Foggy sounded, impossibly, genuinely confused.

Matt frowned, equally confused. “…You’re not mad?”

“Why would I be mad?”

Well, Matt didn’t wanna help him _remember_ why he should be mad. “Just…you were pretty pissed off with me last time.”

Foggy rubbed at his forehead. “Why? I mean, I guess you were putting our law firm in jeopardy, but if it was just to protect people, I feel like I would’ve understood that.”

“I think—I think it was more because I didn’t tell you.”

Foggy froze in the bed. “What?”

Matt froze, too. “I—I didn’t tell you. I—you found me.”

Foggy’s heart started pounding. “When? When did I find you?”

Matt swallowed. “Um. Th-three years ago. Give or take.”

Again, Foggy took his time putting the pieces together. When he finally spoke, he sounded  _gutted_. “So all those years in school together, you didn’t tell me? Even when we were building our firm, you still didn’t…?” Foggy started twisting his blanket. “Just…why?”

“You found me in the mask,” Matt rushed to explain. “I’d just gone after Fisk. It was an ambush and I walked right into it. I barely made it home. You found me on—on the floor of my apartment. Half dead. More than half. You called Cl—a nurse, and she—she took care of me, and y-you made sure I had—you made sure I had water, and blankets, and…”

_And then you left._

Foggy was shaking his head. “You never told me?”

“I told you everything once you found me,” Matt said desperately. “I answered all your questions. Like I am now.”

“Then answer me this.” Foggy’s voice hardened. “Why did you never tell me?”

Matt rubbed the fingers of his right hand together. “Because…” A thousand excuses chased themselves through his mind. He hadn’t wanted to endanger Foggy. He hadn’t wanted to incriminate Foggy. He hadn’t known how to explain it. It’d been nice to pretend, sometimes, that who he was in the mask was different than who he was at the office. He’d just felt so guilty.

All of those were accurate.

But none of them were the truth.

Other people could close their eyes if they didn’t want to know what someone thought of a naked admission. For Matt, it was impossible; all Foggy’s signals were loud and clear. Matt closed his eyes anyway. “Because I was scared.”

It was Foggy’s turn to scoff. “You? The guy who beats up criminals every night, scared?”

Matt wasn’t sure what was in his voice. Disdain? Disgust? He never wanted to hear it again. He’d rather walk out than hear it again. He should definitely keep his mouth shut in case whatever he said made it worse.

But Foggy deserved better. Matt kept his eyes closed, although now that was mostly just because he was afraid he might start crying. When he spoke, he knew he sounded emotionless. Clinical. But there was enough gross honesty in the words without letting his voice shake too. “I was scared that you’d leave. That I wasn’t good enough, and you’d leave. Like Stick. Like Elektra. You—”

“Elektra?”

He could _not_ talk about her right now. “You were my best friend. My only friend, really. And it wasn’t like I had family, or—or—” A tear made its way past his defenses, down his cheek. He scrubbed at it with one hand.

The bed creaked as Foggy leaned closer. “Hey,” he said softly. “It’s okay. I’m here. And…and I guess I didn’t leave, huh?”

The lump in Matt’s throat got heavier. “You did. For…for a while. After you found me.”

“Oh.” Foggy lowered his head. “Sorry.”

“You don’t owe me any apologies.”

“Did I ever apologize, though? For leaving?”

As if Foggy had been in the wrong. As if Foggy hadn’t deserved all the apologies—every apology that Matt was never able to bring himself to give. “It was my fault. Everything that—”

“I’m sorry,” Foggy cut in firmly. “I’m so, _so_ sorry.”

“You had every right,” Matt insisted.

“Maybe I did. I don’t care. I’m _sorry_ , Matt.”

For the first time, he said his name like it was something familiar.

The pressure in Matt’s chest loosened just enough that he could breathe. “I’m sorry, too.” It wasn’t a strong enough word for the ache of regret he felt. “I’m sorry I put you in danger. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry you had to find out like that. I’m sorry for all of it.” He fidgeted with the fabric of his jeans. “And I’d—I’d give anything to go back, and—and just _choose_ to tell you, but—”

“Matt,” Foggy said quietly.

He snapped his mouth shut.

“Matt, get over here.”

“Why?” Matt asked nervously.

Foggy let out an impatient gust of breath. “Because I need to hug you and you’re the only one of us who can walk that far.”

That made no sense. Foggy wasn’t supposed to offer hugs after learning Matt’s secrets, apologies notwithstanding. He was supposed to walk out. And since he couldn’t, he was supposed to send Matt away.

Matt got up slowly, like if he moved too fast this whole alternate reality might shatter. He could only hope Foggy couldn’t sense his trepidation as he approached the bed. He wasn’t sure how to work out the mechanics of a hug with Foggy sitting there, kind of hunched over, so Matt warily lowered himself onto the edge.

Then Foggy’s arms were around him, shockingly strong given that he’d been in a _coma_. Then again, Matt wasn’t putting up much resistance as Foggy tugged him closer.

This didn’t make sense. They were strangers, not—

“Matty,” Foggy whispered. “I remember.”

 

Claire

She hadn’t been fired, not even after her disastrous testimony.

(Matt insisted it hadn’t been disastrous. He’d also asked, with his forehead creased like he was in physical pain, how else she’d skirted procedure to help him. She’d asked where he thought she got all her fancy first aid supplies, like the meds she’d used to keep him alive after he’d gotten dosed with devil’s hell. Maybe Tower hadn’t known about that, maybe she could’ve gotten away with lying, but what if the truth had come out? Perjury was _not_ something she needed to deal with.)

Now she had the night shift, which was definitely a punishment, but tonight she was taking full advantage of it. Which meant slowing down every time she passed Foggy Nelson’s door, listening for shouting or crying or even just angry breathing. All she heard was the low murmur of voices that sounded painfully wary, like both Matt and Foggy were walking on eggshells. She though that meant things were going…well.

But at around three in the morning, she walked by and didn’t hear anything. Maybe it wasn’t her place to immediately call Matt and make sure he was okay, but…she could always blame it on concern for Foggy. Like it was important to his healthcare to know how the conversation went. Which it kinda was, potentially.

Internally lecturing herself for such a complete lack of boundaries, she dialed Matt’s burner and was shocked to hear low buzzing from the other side of the door. She hung up immediately.

Throwing caution (and professionalism) to the wind, she opened the door as quietly as possible and squinted. Foggy’s room was dark, lit only by the blue and green lights of various machinery and the warm glow of a streetlight outside. It was enough for her to make out Foggy’s sleeping form under the blankets, with Matt’s long, dark shape stretched out next to him on the edge of the bed, his head on Foggy’s shoulder. Matt’s shoes were on the floor.

Could your heart break from happiness?

She was about to back out when Matt’s sightless eyes cracked open, glinting. “Claire?” His voice was scratchy with sleep.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “I was just checking on him.”

“Explains why you were calling me.” He shifted, a little closer to Foggy and a little farther from falling off the edge.

She didn’t bother pretending she hadn’t been worried about him. “I’m guessing it went well.”

“Better than I deserve,” he murmured, eyes closing again.

There was that indomitable guilt complex again. But he tucked his head against Foggy’s shoulder, and he looked so peaceful that she didn’t bother calling him out on it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here's my thought process on this: no matter how much Matt and Foggy reconcile post Seasons 1, 2, and 3, that doesn't change the fact that Matt never chose to tell Foggy about Daredevil. Which if I'm Foggy means I can never be sure that Matt wouldn't have kept the secret indefinitely if he could've. So this chapter is my attempt at a) giving Matt the chance to really be brave and selfless in choosing to tell Foggy the truth, and b) assuring Foggy that Matt really does want to share this part of his life with him. Cool? Cool.


	42. Enemy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Enemy" by Wolves at the Gate (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEJ-OWTH90g).

Matt

He woke to the warmth of the sun and the steady beating of Foggy’s heart. Matt pressed instinctively closer to the heat beside him and felt Foggy stir in response.

“You awake?” Foggy whispered.

Reluctantly, Matt opened his eyes. “Yeah.”

“Good morning.” Foggy’s hair brushed against the pillow as he turned his head to face Matt. “Didn’t think you’d still be here. Did you tell Karen?”

“Yeah. Texted her last night.” He didn’t need her worrying and sending the Punisher out looking for him. “Time is it?”

“Time isn’t real in hospital rooms,” Foggy informed him.

Closing his eyes again, he tucked his head against Foggy’s shoulder. “Oh. Makes sense.”

He didn’t really fall back asleep, and neither did Foggy. But they didn’t talk either, or do much of anything other than lie there in the peacefulness.

At least, Matt didn’t think he fell asleep. But he must have, because he didn’t realize Marci was nearby until she was stepping into the room. He jolted upright.

Foggy sat up much more slowly. “Oh, hi, Marci. What…” He trailed off uncertainly and Matt smelled the salt in the air from the tears springing to Marci’s eyes as she stopped in the doorway.

“Shut up,” she snapped, giving her head a sharp shake and striding across the room to kiss Foggy’s forehead. “It’s just good to have you back.” Then she pulled back and pointed at Matt. “You. Go. Your choice between dry shampoo or an actual shower—”

Matt made a face at the mere thought of dry shampoo.

“—but you do _not_ get a choice on a tie. You’re wearing this one, Karen and I already decided.” She threw a piece of fabric at him.

“…Isn’t that mine?” Foggy asked.

“It’s baby blue and it makes him look innocent,” Marci said crisply. With that, she literally pushed Matt out of the hospital bed. Too focused on protecting Foggy’s tie from the dirty hospital room floor, he landed flat on his back with a loud _thud_ and a soft groan.

“And yet he insists he’s a ninja,” Foggy remarked.

“Shut up,” Matt mumbled.

 

About two hours later, Matt was sitting down in the witness chair wearing Foggy’s tie. (It was absurdly soft. He might keep it.) Foggy himself was sitting between Karen and Maggie with the other spectators. (Frank Castle and Jessica Jones were hiding in different cafés across the street from the courthouse in case something went wrong.) Ella and her parents sat in the row behind Foggy; Matt could hear her incessant, whispered questions. He’d thought it would be a good idea for her to see what direct and cross examinations were like. And if she found the whole thing too traumatizing, well, maybe she’d decide not to testify. Win-win.

Marci stood in the center of the well, posture erect, hands at her side with one elbow cocked. “Please tell the jury who you are, spelling your last name for the record.”

Amazing how much less nervous he felt this time, now that he didn’t have to hide who he really was. Matt turned to face the jury. “My name is Matthew Murdock. M-U-R-D-O-C-K.”

“Where are you from, Mr. Murdock?”

“Hell’s Kitchen,” he answered. “Born and raised.”

“Do you have family here?”

“My wife,” he said readily, taking no small amount of pride at saying those words, getting them on record forever. “Also…my mom still lives here.”

He’d resisted mentioning her. Marci insisted it humanized him. Matt insisted that he at least not mention her by name.

“What about your father?”

Matt wet his lips. “My dad, uh…my dad was Jack Murdock. Battlin’ Jack. He passed when I was ten years old.”

“I’m sorry for your loss. Did you live with your mother, then?”

“No. Ah.” He didn’t want to talk about this part, either. Marci said it would make him look sympathetic. Marci was right. Ad Marci didn’t care that he didn’t _want_ to look sympathetic. “She wasn’t around.”

“So where did you stay?”

He took a deep breath. In the grand scheme of things, this admission was miniscule. And talking to Foggy about it made it…well, not _easy_ , but _doable_. “St. Agnes.”

“For how long?”

“Until college.” There. That was the worst of his history out of the way. “I went to Colombia for pre-law and law school.”

“And that’s what you do for a living?”

“I’m a defense lawyer.”

“Why did you decide to become a defense lawyer?”

He set his shoulders back a little, sat up a little straighter. “To help people.”

“And…are there any other ways that you help people?”

“Yes,” he said steadily. This was it. This was it. He sensed the eyes of the jurors, of Lauria, of all the spectators resting on him. But were they curious or disdainful? Grateful or unnerved? No matter; their opinion of him didn’t change the truth. “I’m Daredevil.”

Saying that, out loud, to the public…didn’t matter that they all knew it anyway. He was owning the thing he was most proud of and most ashamed of and the wave of relief couldn’t entirely drown out the jolt of panic, the instant regret.

Too late. It was a matter of record.

“Can you explain to the jurors what that means?” Marci asked.

Shifting on the seat, he cleared his throat. “It means that when I’m out at night and I hear that someone needs help, I help them. I’ve stopped robberies, assaults, kidnappings, sexual assaults…just, you know, whatever I can do to help.”

“How long have you been doing this?”

“Four years.”

“How did you start going out at night?”

Another thing he hadn’t wanted to talk about. Another thing Marci had argued was important for the jury to hear. “I was, uh…there was a little girl who lived near me. I’d hear her at night. Crying. Because…because her dad kept going into her room.”

One of the jury members, the same one who’d been so intently focused on Claire’s testimony, stiffened.

“At first, I tried the, uh, the normal route. I called child protective services, but they didn’t change anything. So one night, I followed him. I stopped him myself.”

“How?”

Matt kept his voice steady. “I broke his jaw and told him not to touch his daughter again.”

It was possible, just possible, that the same little girl would hear about his testimony and somehow put the pieces together. It was possible that the _mother_ would hear, and realize how wrong she’d been.

Marci switched subjects. “Can you tell us why you wear the glasses and carry that cane?”

“I’m blind.”

“You’re completely blind?”

“Completely. No light perception whatsoever.”

“Then, please, could you explain for us how you help people the way that you do?”

“Of course.” Strangely, _this_ was the only part he was actually nervous about. “When I lost my sight, my other senses were enhanced.”

“Excuse me,” Marci said, slight surprise in her voice that would’ve sounded genuine to anyone who didn’t know her. “You _lost_ your sight?”

“I wasn’t born blind. I was nine years old when I lost my sight.”

“Can you tell us about that?”

Foggy’s voice echoed in his ears. _You, my friend, are a hero_. Matt felt his face grow hot, but Foggy wanted this. “I was nine. There was a truck that was out of control, heading straight for an older gentleman on the sidewalk. I pushed him out of the way, and…and the truck hit me instead. It was carrying radioactive chemicals, according to a lawsuit that went nowhere.”

Tower stood up resignedly. “Objection, your Honor. We never reviewed this lawsuit, and Mr. Murdock’s claims are either speculation or hearsay—”

“My client can substantiate his own claim if you give him a second,” Marci cut in.

Lauria seemed interested despite herself. “I don’t want anyone transforming into the Hulk in my courtroom, Counselor. Short of that, go ahead.”

Tower sat down.

“Mr. Murdock,” Marci said sweetly, turning back to Matt. “What leads you to believe that the chemicals were radioactive?”

A small voice in the back of Matt’s head, a voice that sounded a bit like Stick and a bit like himself, told him he didn’t need to parade around like a trained dog. A louder voice that sounded like Foggy and Karen said this was his chance to prove himself.

And, honestly, it was gonna be kind of fun.

“I don’t know what color your suit is, but I know it’s lined with silk on the inside…because I can hear it, just like I can hear every heartbeat in this room.” Those heartbeats sped up; someone gasped dramatically. “I know Mr. Tower had an expensive coffee from down the block, but his lunch was just two protein bars from the vending machine down the hall.” He flashed a grin. “Because I can smell it.” While Tower’s heartbeat raced out of control, he turned to face the jury. “Juror Number Five has a pet rat, I think, or maybe a mouse. Juror Number Eight—”

“Mr. Murdock,” Lauria cut in, breathless and agitated. “Please refrain from using the jury for your demonstration.”

“Would you like to be involved instead, Your Honor?” he asked innocently.

“That’ll do,” she snapped.

He shrugged. “Fair enough. I’m blind,” he finished, “but my other senses are heightened. It’s not compensation, not really, but it allows me to do what I do.”

“Thank you.” Marci clasped her hands behind her back. “Now, were you in court for Detective Sergeant Brett Mahoney’s testimony?”

“I was.”

“Do you remember that he testified that you were with Vladimir Ranskahov and Officer Sullivan in an abandoned warehouse?”

“I do.”

“I want you to talk more about that, but let’s start by backing up. Tell us, how do you end up at that warehouse that night?”

Matt adjusted his tie and glasses. “I’m tracking the Russians, who are running a human trafficking ring here in Hell’s Kitchen. But they did something to upset Fisk, who retaliated by blowing up their central locations. I’d tracked Vladimir to one of those locations. I’ve just subdued him when the cops arrive.”

“What do the cops want?”

“At first, I think they just want to bring us in. As long as they bring Vladimir in too, I’m not gonna fight them.  I…” He winced, knowing Foggy would _hate_ this next part. “I let them handcuff me without a struggle.”

And, yep, Foggy’s heart started beating faster as he realized what almost happened, how close they’d come to everything falling apart way back then.

“Do the cops bring you in?”

A bit of the devil slipped into his voice. “No. They’re corrupt, working for Fisk. They try to shoot Vladimir at the scene. I escape the handcuffs and incapacitate the cops, but not before one of them manages to shoot Vladimir in the side. He’s bleeding out, fast.”

“What do you do next?”

“I take him to an abandoned warehouse.”

“Why?”

He raised his eyebrows. “So I can keep the cops from shooting him on sight.”

“All right, what happens at that warehouse?”

“He’s still bleeding. Bad. So my first step is to cauterize the wound. While I’m trying to get him to tell me the names of everyone Fisk’s working with, I hear Officer Sullivan enter the building. Vladimir loses consciousness, so I’m free to, uh…to incapacitate Officer Sullivan.”

“How?”

He shrugged uncomfortably. “I pin him to the floor. Control his firearm. I determine that he isn’t working for Fisk.”

“How do you determine that?”

He wanted to glare at Marci; she wasn’t supposed to ask more questions about his senses. She _knew_ how he felt about that. “By, uh…listening to his heartbeat. It’s fast, but even. No jump when he tells me he’s working for the city of New York, just two months on the job.”

It was hearsay, but Tower didn’t object. Maybe because he knew how easily Marci would dodge it, or maybe because he was as curious about had happened in that warehouse as everyone else.

Matt resisted the urge to shift in his seat under the weight of all their attention.

“What do you do once you determine that this cop is not working for Fisk?”

“I tell him to call central to tell them he came to the warehouse for a false alarm. Instead, he does the opposite. He gives away our position.”

Marci paused. “Does that make things very urgent?”

He raised his eyebrows again, this time incredulously. “Extremely. I can hear all the sirens screaming towards us, and I’ve still got Vladimir passed out from a gunshot wound. I knock Sullivan out before he can make things worse and…” Wait. He swallowed. “And I handcuff him to a support beam with duct tape over his mouth.”

“Why?”

Matt swallowed a second time. In the midst of the panic and confusion, he’d never really taken time to feel guilty for what happened to Sullivan. But now, all of a sudden, it hit him.

In the middle of the courtroom.

In the middle of his testimony.

Not good. He breathed out through his nose, forcing himself to concentrate past the sick feeling in his gut. “Uh, sorry? Could you repeat the question?”

Marci’s heartrate ticked up a bit in confusion and maybe possibly even worry. Wanting to know what was wrong with him. “Why do you leave Sullivan handcuffed to a support beam?”

“So he can’t get in the way.” How selfish was that when he could’ve taken him with them, he could’ve…. “And because I’m thinking that whoever finds him will…will, uh…be on his side.”

“And what do you do next?”

Focus. Concentrate. “I find a way out. I take Vladimir with me.”

“What happens to Vladimir?”

“He…he’s still hurt. He doesn’t want to come with me. He stays behind to…take out as many of Fisk’s people as he can, and to…” He felt terrible, a vortex of emotions churning through him, and there wasn’t any time to sort it all out. “To draw fire,” he finished weakly.

“Do you observe his death?”

Damnit, Marci. It was like Matt was back in the tunnels, breathing the stale blood-soaked air and listening to Vladimir fight for breath under a spray of bullets. “I…I’m not _there_ , I’d left, but, I mean, I…I hear it.”

“What do you mean, you hear it?”

Marci, what the hell? Matt inhaled sharply to keep from saying the words aloud. But now he was on his knees on a cold street, with blood seeping into his pants, hearing the final beats of Conway’s heart. “I _hear his heart stop_.”

“Do you hear anything to explain why his heart stopped?”

It was obvious what she was doing, but he just wanted her to stop. “Gunfire.”

“And, if your senses are that good, does that mean you can hear Officer Sullivan’s death as well?”

Painfully aware of every eye on him, Matt knew that the last thing he needed was to appear angry. Which was bad, because he was _furious_. At Marci, at the corrupt agents who’d taken Sullivan’s life while he was defenseless. At himself for leaving Sullivan defenseless. He switched to past tense; he didn’t care if it made the testimony feel less real; he didn’t _want_ it to feel real. “Yes. I heard it.”

At least Marci had the decency to follow his lead, although that meant nothing to him in the wake of these questions. “Can you tell the jury what, exactly, you heard?”

He closed his eyes behind his glasses in lieu of gritting his teeth. “I wasn’t listening until I heard one of the agents report that Officer Sullivan was dead. But I heard Officer Sullivan make a noise in response, so I knew that wasn’t true. And then I heard Officer Sullivan make a sound like…like he was choking on blood. Drowning. And then I didn’t hear anything else from him.”

“Did you hear his heart stop?”

Matt gave a tiny shake of his head. “Too far away.”

“All right. So, just to be clear, did you kill Vladimir Ranskahov?”

“No.”

“And did you kill Officer Sullivan?”

He’d as good as killed him. “No.”

She nodded slowly. “Now, Mr. Murdock, aside from then, have you had other run-ins with law enforcement?”

Matt took a moment to get his thoughts in order. “Yes. On several occasions while Fisk still had corrupt officers in the NYPD, I occasionally had to protect myself or others from them. But unless they were threatening someone else, I tried to avoid them.”

“What about Detective Mahoney?”

“I used force against him once,” Matt admitted, “but that was so I could get close enough to tell him what was going on. He and I developed a mutual respect after that.”

“And what about after Fisk and his corrupt cops were exposed?”

“After that, I worked with the NYPD almost every night. I’d subdue criminals, and usually by that point the NYPD would catch up and book them.”

“What about the FBI?”

“Fisk corrupted FBI agents too,” Matt said bitterly. “Again, on several occasions, I had to defend myself or others from them. But whenever I found agents who weren’t corrupt—such as the late Special Agent Ray Nadeem—I’d cooperate with them however I could.”

“Did you ever go out of your way to threaten any law enforcement officer?”

“No,” Matt said as earnestly as he could.

“Did you ever harm an officer who wasn’t first hurting you or someone else?”

“No.”

Marci paced a little to the left, head tilted demurely. “Thank you, Mr. Murdock. Now to finish up, could you just explain for us what a night as Daredevil is like for you?”

“Of course.” It felt surreal to explain this, but this was why he had to testify. “Every night, I go out onto my roof. It’s high enough that I can hear the city pretty well. On quiet nights, sometimes I’ll find some of the alleys that are known for trouble, and usually someone needs help there. But most nights, I don’t have to wait long before I hear the screams from my own roof.”

“And what do you do when you hear the screams?”

He leaned forward over the table. “I figure out why the person is screaming. If they’re in danger, I try to remove the danger.”

“How?”

“Usually the danger is from another person. Sometimes just low-level thugs, sometimes something bigger. My first priority is always to make sure the victim gets away. Then I make sure whoever’s attacking them can’t follow them, or attack someone else.”

“How do you do that?”

 _However I can,_ would be the, well, most honest answer. “The goal is incapacitation. What is required varies with the circumstances. Someones I can take out someone’s knee or twist their arm and that’s enough. Sometimes it requires more force. I always err on the side of protecting the victim.”

“Thank you.” Marci stepped back and cocked her head at Tower. “Your witness.”

 

Tower took his place. “Mr. Murdock, during your direct examinations, all of your answers were given under penalty of perjury.”

“That’s usually how it works,” he muttered before he could help himself. Reign it in, Murdock. He ran a hand down his tie; it really was soft.

“And it’s your testimony today, under oath, that you are in fact the vigilante known as Daredevil?”

“Well, I didn’t choose the name.”

“Are you?” Tower snapped.

Matt lifted his chin. “Yes.”

“Thank you. And as Daredevil you try to stop bad guys.”

“Yes,” Matt agreed cautiously.

“You don’t think the NYPD is doing a good enough job.”

“I think they’re trying.”

“But some criminals escape them, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“And even criminals who get caught, sometimes they end up on the streets again?”

Matt narrowed his eyes. “Yes.”

“As a defense attorney, you’re pretty familiar with that.”

“I suppose.”

“And as Daredevil, you feel like it’s your job to fill the gaps.”

“Yes. Definitely.”

“Because if you don’t, no one will, isn’t that right?”

Matt wet his lips. “I mean, Iron Man isn’t going to come flying down to deal with a single murderer or rapist.”

“And that’s why you’ll do whatever it takes to stop the bad guys.”

Matt sat up straighter. “Not whatever it takes, no.”

“So you knock the bad guys around, but let them go back to killing or raping the next week?”

“What, hypothetically?” Matt snapped.

“Mr. Murdock, isn’t it true that you’d rather stop the bad guys from doing the same bad thing in a week?”

“Of course.”

“I’m just curious, how many of these bad guys have you talked to about getting therapy?”

Matt knew exactly where he was going. This was unbelievably stupid. “None.”

“How many have you talked to about finding religion?”

“None.”

“How many have you talked to about turning their lives around in any other way?”

Could he just get to the point? “None.”

“Right, so the only way you can stop these guys from doing the same exact thing in a week is by physical force.”

“If you’re asking whether the force I use is proportional,” Matt said flatly, “it is. When I stop a crime, I don’t go further than I have to.”

 _His_ heart skipped at the lie. But, well, that was what confession was for.

“Actually, Mr. Murdock, my question was if the only way you can stop these bad guys from doing the same sorts of crimes the next week is with physical force.”

“Yeah, all right. Yes.”

“You don’t call the police.”

“I call the police once the imminent threat has been dealt with.”

“And _dealing with_ the imminent threat typically involves breaking bones?”

“I’m stopping some very angry people, Mr. Tower,” Matt said as calmly as he could. “It takes more than a slap on the wrist.”

“Mr. Murdock, as a defense attorney, you’re familiar with due process, aren’t you?”

Matt stifled a scowl. “Yes.”

“So you understand how important it is that no one’s life or liberty is taken from them without a fair trial.”

“That’s the idea, yes.”

“And if someone’s life or liberty _is_ taken from them without a fair trial, that’s where you defense attorneys try to appeal the whole situation.”

“Yes.”

“All of that is part of the pursuit of _justice_.”

“Yes.”

“And it’s a way to ensure that the government is held _accountable_.”

“Ensure is a little strong,” Matt said wryly.

Tower ignored that. “But vigilantes don’t give anyone due process.”

“I drop the criminals off at the precinct whenever I can,” Matt pointed out.

“That’s right, you do. But tell me, if a police officer threatened a criminal into confessing to a crime, would that confession be admissible in a court of law?”

“No.”

“And so if these criminals of yours slink into the precinct and confess to whatever wrongdoing out of fear that a violent vigilante is stalking them, is that just?”

“I’m not forcing them to confess and I’m not the one who’ll prosecute them,” Matt argued. “It’s different.”

“But there’s no system for holding vigilantes accountable, _is there_ , Mr. Murdock?”

He shrugged. “The press has done a pretty good job of it, actually.”

“Until Daredevil shows up at the Bulletin.”

Matt tensed up. “That wasn’t me and you know it.”

“But it could’ve been you.”

“ _No_ , I would never—”

“And we’re supposed to take your word on that, are we?” Tower took a few steps to the right, subtly signaling a shift in focus. “Now, I also mentioned the appeals process. The criminals you attack don’t have any way to _appeal_ your treatment of them, do they?”

“Well,” Matt said tightly, “they can always complain to the NYPD.”

“Always?” Tower echoed. “They can _always_ complain to the NYPD?”

“It might make them look bad, since the NYPD knows I only bother with criminals, but…” Matt shrugged. “The choice is theirs.”

“Do they always have that choice, Mr. Murdock?”

Matt frowned. “Yes.”

“What about Kyle Conway?”

In her seat among the spectators, Ella's heartrate skyrocketed.

“Objection!” Marci yelled. “404, Your Honor. This—”

“I’m not making a propensity argument,” Tower shot back.

“But—”

“Overruled,” Lauria interrupted.

Tower wasted no time turning on Matt again. “Kyle Conway didn’t have the choice of going to the NYPD about what you did to him.”

The room constricted around him. “It wasn’t my fault.”

“Please answer the question. Kyle Conway didn’t have the choice of going to the NYPD, _did he?_ ”

Matt dug his nails into the palms of his hands. “No. He was a hemophiliac. He bled out.”

“That’s right, you killed him.”

“It was self-defense.”

“Ah, yes, because Daredevil felt threatened by a single middle-aged man.”

“He had a _knife_ , and there were others present who were more vulnerable.”

“Wasn’t he drunk?”

“…Yes.”

Tower’s head bobbed towards the jury like he thought he was inviting them to join him in condemning the scene he’d painted: Daredevil using a knife against a drunk, middle-aged man. “Now, setting all that aside, Mr. Murdock, we only know what happened because you confessed. Isn’t that right? You confessed to Kyle Conway’s daughter that you killed her father.”

Matt inhaled slowly through his nose. “I explained to her the facts of the accident, yes.”

“How many other people have you killed?”

“ _None,_ ” Matt growled.

“I’m not asking how many other killings you’ve confessed—I understand you’ve only confessed to the one killing. I’m asking how many other people you’ve _killed_.”

“None!” His heart pounded. “I don’t—I don’t kill people.”

“Fine,” Tower said softly. He moved closer to Matt. “Just a few more questions, Mr. Murdock. You frequently involve yourself in fights that have nothing to do with you, isn’t that right?”

Matt gritted his teeth. “I think the safety of the innocents of Hell’s Kitchen is relevant to all of us, don’t you?”

“But isn’t it true that you _chase down_ fights that you’d have no reason to even know about were it not for your _enhanced_ senses?”

“I’ve no idea. I’ve had enhanced senses for over twenty years.”

“Redirecting you back to my question,” Tower replied, unfazed, “isn’t it true that you sometimes have to chase down your fights?”

“When someone’s in danger, yes.”

“But sometimes not just when someone’s in danger,” Tower said.

Matt raised his eyebrows. “No. Only if someone’s in danger.”

“But you’ve also tortured people to get information.”

“Torture?” Matt echoed blankly, cringing internally.

“Do I need to repeat the question?”

No, he did not need the point reiterated. “Uh, no. Sometimes it’s necessary to stop a larger threat. That was the only way I even knew who Fisk _was_.”

Tower took a single step closer. “You were found recently at the home of Felix Manning, whom you left with two broken bones, a broken windpipe, and bruising around his neck.”

“Someone was in danger. He was—”

“Yes or no,” Tower interrupted.

“I don’t know,” Matt shot back. “I never saw the medical report.”

Juror Number Three snickered.

“Felix Manning is a sixty-eight-year-old man, isn’t he?”

“I really couldn’t say.”

“But he was in no danger of causing anyone immediate harm.”

Matt kept his voice even. “Special Agent Nadeem testified in his dying declaration that Manning worked for Fisk, feeding Fisk information to—”

“Mr. Murdock, you’re a lawyer, aren’t you?”

Matt stifled a sigh. “Yes.”

“So you’re familiar with how direct and cross examinations work.”

Damnit. “Yes,” Matt admitted.

“So you’re aware of the fact that, on direct, you can tell as much of your story as you want, but on cross, you have to answer my questions specifically?”

“Yes,” Matt said sullenly.

“Now, Mr. Murdock, I’m trying to ask questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no. Do you think you can handle that?”

Damnit. “I’m just trying to answer your questions thoroughly.”

“That’s what direct and redirect are for, as I know you’re aware. With a yes or a no, please tell me: was Felix Manning _himself_ in any danger of _personally_ causing anyone immediate harm?”

“No,” Matt said flatly.

“And yet you caused him serious injury, _didn’t you_ , Mr. Murdock?”

Marci was glaring daggers at him, he could feel it. “Yes,” he said, keeping his head up and expression clear like this line of questioning didn’t matter at all, like it wasn’t completely undermining their strategy.

Tower let that hang for what felt like five minutes. Then he stepped back. “I’m done with this witness.”

“Counsel?” Lauria asked Marci.

Matt gave the slightest possible shake of his head.

Marci stood up. “The witness may step down.”

 

The court took a recess, which was a relief given the frustration buzzing under Matt's skin. Marci’s mood seemed about as foul as she and Matt deftly sidestepped everyone’s well-intentioned attempts to talk to them to find an abandoned hallway.

Marci’s heels clacked ceaselessly as she paced. “Well, that went _great_. You couldn’t have just dealt with Manning _after_ the trial, no, you’ve gotta do it before you testify. Thanks, really.”

As bad as that was, that wasn’t the part he was mad about. “What the hell were you thinking, those questions about my senses? Really? In what universe was that a good idea?”

“We needed that testimony after Tower made Brett Mahoney sound like you killed both Ranskahov and Sullivan! We had to—”

“You should’ve _warned_ me, we should’ve _discussed_ this!”

“Like we should’ve discussed you going on a torture rampage?”

Clamping his mouth shut, he squared his jaw and kept silent.

“Forget it.” She kneaded at her temples with her hands. “I have enough to deal with without fighting with you.”

Matt deflated like a punctured balloon. “Marci…”

“I said, forget it.”

“I’m sorry.”

Her hands dropped to her side. “What?”

“I should’ve had someone else go. I just…it felt like something I had to do.”

“I cannot deal with your martyrdom, Matt. I really cannot.”

He wet his lips. “I know. I wasn’t thinking about how it would affect you, and it was selfish of me.”

Her arms wrapped around herself. “You know, that’s actually a half-decent apology.”

“…Thanks?”

For several seconds, she didn’t respond. Then: “I’m sorry, too.”

He blinked. “Come again?”

“You’re right, I should’ve talked with you about the questions. It’s just…we didn’t exactly have a lot of time to prep you for your deposition.”

A text would’ve sufficed. Mercifully, he kept the words back.

“I didn’t even think to clear it with you, actually. And I know that’s bad, but I just…we’ve been working so well together, and…and…” She sniffed. “And I was kind of thinking more about Foggy. Sorry.”

“No,” Matt said quietly. “I get it.” He touched her arm. “Hey…Marci?”

“Yeah?”

“I think you’re right, you know.”

“About?” she asked suspiciously.

He offered her a smile. “About us working well together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I'm behind in replying to comments! I'll get to it asap. In the meantime, your comments on the last chapter? dskjeweidj you guys are the absolute best.


	43. Shout the Battle Cry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Warrior" by Hannah Kerr (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2LmSDVZdNg).
> 
> I'm not super in love with this chapter but I'm also trying to a bunch of stuff for the law school journal (I got on! Yay!) and it is ~death~ so I'm just gonna post this and stop second-guessing everything.
> 
> ALSO I'M SORRY FOR THE CLIFFHANGER PLEASE FORGIVE ME

Foggy

He couldn’t figure out where to put the iPod Ella had given him from the hospital and ended up just sort of standing in his and Marci’s apartment, turning it over and over in his hands. His brain wandered off.

First things first. He’d been shot. In the head. He still couldn’t remember the exact moment, which was probably a blessing, but things were filling in around it.

Then Fisk released a bunch of evidence, some real and some fake, about Karen’s homicides, which was finally enough to push Tower into arresting her.

And because she was guilty as sin but also pregnant, she took a deal and the police arrested Matt.

Who got out on bail despite being a suspected vigilante because he was _still_ a handsome, wounded duck and had at least some members of the NYPD wrapped around his finger.

And so, of course, the first thing he did with his freedom was haul off and beat a guy up.

That part made a little more sense. Not in a _rational_ kind of way because it was the stupidest thing Matt had done that Foggy could think of at the moment, but in an I-actually-remember-this kind of way because Foggy blurrily remembered Matt showing up with a warning and an apology on his lips, and saying something about love.

Maybe.

Anyway, his head hurt and his throat still felt dry and he just wanted to sleep, and then figure out if he’d need to buy a wig or something before going to court.

“You’re not going to court, Foggy Bear,” Marci said. He must’ve said that out loud.

“I gotta,” he insisted. It was very important she understood this. “It’s the opening. Matt can’t give openings. He _can’t_.” It was important she understood this, too. He looked to Matt, who’d come over to help Foggy settle back into the apartment and couldn’t seem to find a reason to leave, for confirmation.

“I can, Foggy.” Matt was wearing jeans and a slightly oversized long-sleeved shirt. He was more muscular than he’d been in law school—apparently vigilantism made for a killer workout routine—but the profile was similar enough that Foggy’s stomach flipped with newborn nostalgia.

Foggy ignored him; so did Marci. “I already gave the opening, Foggy Bear.”

Right, obviously; he’d sat through Matt’s examinations just yesterday, although his mind was still stuck on the opening statement thing. “He gets too aggressive,” Foggy mumbled. “Too argumentative, makes…makes everyone upset.”

“That was _one time_ ,” Matt protested, leaning against the windowsill with his hands shoved into his pockets, a stupidly soft expression on his face. Dust motes swirled around him in the early morning city light. Marci sucked at cleaning when she was left alone.

She stroked her hand through what was left of Foggy’s hair. “You can open next time.”

“Okay, so I’ll close,” Foggy offered. Marci just laughed under her breath, but Matt’s head snapped towards him, lips slightly parted in surprise. “Anyway, it’s…Ella today, right?”

Marci nodded, nibbling on her bottom lip. Matt’s expression suddenly hardened with the set of his jaw.

“Worried?” Foggy asked.

Marci rolled her eyes. “Do I look like a kid person, Foggy Bear? I wish we could just…take what’s in her brain and share it with the jury without actually putting _her_ on the stand.”

“She’s smart,” Foggy said firmly. “And confident, and brave. She can handle herself.”

“You guessing, or you remember?”

“Remember.” Foggy closed his eyes and imagined a small living room, Matt and Ella sitting on the floor, Ella guiding his larger hands over the bruises on her arms. Then he imagined an old law office lined with an impressive amount of books (Matt read more of them than Foggy ever did), and Ella looking undersized where she sat at the conference table, doing her best to respond to the rapid-fire questions from her parents’ attorneys. And that wasn’t the least of what she’d been through. “Marci? Was I there when Ella got drugged with, uh…” She waited patiently until Foggy remembered the words, although one of her hands squeezed into a fist upon hearing Ella was drugged, tight enough that her nails were probably digging into her palm. “Devil’s hell, that. Was I there when she was drugged with it?”

“She was drugged?” Marci’s voice stayed impressively level despite her flashing eyes. “I don’t know if you were there for that, Foggy Bear.”

“You weren’t there,” Matt explained quietly. “I told you about it. After.”

“Oh.” Still, no one was denying it’d happened, which meant his point was valid. “She’s tough, Marci. She can handle it. I used to think she couldn’t, you know? But she can. Besides, she’s talking to Matt.”

Marci didn’t look reassured. “Only for some of the time.”

Yeah, but Tower had to know better than to hurt Ella. If not because the jury would hate him then because he now knew that he’d have to answer to Daredevil as well as to Matt Murdock.

Unfortunately, Matt Murdock didn’t seem excited about the plan either. A muscle was twitching in his jaw and the fingers of his right hand rubbed together the way they always did when he was anxious.

Marci took one look at him and sighed. “No.”

He frowned. “I didn’t say anything.”

“No, but you’re thinking it. C’mon, spit it out.”

Foggy was confused. “Did you guys get a psychic link I don’t know about?”

Marci sighed again, more loudly this time. “No, but he’s been constantly oscillating over Ella testifying so there’s no reason to think he’d stick to the plan now.”

“You just said you were worried about this,” Matt pointed out petulantly.

“ _I’m_ worried, _you’re_ brooding.”

“I’m not—” Matt cut himself off, eyebrows pinching together over his sunglasses.

“If she’s as brave as you guys keep saying, she can handle whatever Tower throws at her,” Marci insisted. “Especially with you objecting to every other question Tower asks.”

“It’s not Tower I’m worried about,” Matt said darkly.

Marci opened her mouth, probably to argue, but Foggy remembered how fiercely Matt had advocated to give Ella the chance to testify for herself; if he wanted her off the stand, it wasn’t because he was worried about cross-examination. “Did something change? Did you…hear something out on the streets?”

Matt’s scowl deepened. “No.”

“So…why the sudden freak-out?” Foggy asked.

“I told you,” Marci muttered, “he’s oscillating.”

“I’m not oscillating,” Matt said flatly. “We agreed to do this, so we’re doing this.” He snatched his jacket and headed for the door. “And when this falls back on her, I guess I’ll just deal with it.”

The door slammed shut behind him. Marci and Foggy exchanged glances.

 

Marci

At the courthouse, Matt acted like his outburst hadn’t happened. He calmly went over the strategy for Ella’s questions one more time, and he made a beeline to the seven-year-old as soon as he picked up on her voice or heartbeat or whatever. Marci could say this much for him: he really did want Ella to have her chance to help him in a way that mattered to her, no matter how uncomfortable it made him. She just wondered if he’d ever come down off high alert after Ella’s testimony.

(Technically, that shouldn’t matter to Marci. Shortly after Ella’s testimony, Matt would no longer be her current client. What did she care if he couldn’t relax? But she found that she _did_ care—and not just because Matt’s attitude tended to effect Foggy.)

Lauria made a few additional comments before allowing Matt to call Ella to the stand: pointed comments at the lawyers to show extra discretion, and an extra comment to the jury about how to evaluate Ella’s testimony. Then Matt called Ella, and she trooped up to the witness stand with her head high, curls bouncing. The only indication of nervousness was the way her eyes darted around, from face to face.

Matt waited until she was settled at the chair, her legs too short for her feet to touch the ground. She crossed her ankles and folded her hands on the desk and sat very, very still, blinking wide eyes at Matt.

He offered her an encouraging smile. “Hi, Ella. Could you let the members of the jury know who you are? Just tell us your first and last name, please, and please spell your last name.”

“My name’s Elizabeth Vallier,” she answered primly. “V-A-L…um…L-I-E-R?” Her voice went up at the end, like she wasn’t sure.

“Thanks,” Matt said smoothly. “How old are you, Ella?”

“Seven,” she said more assuredly. “And a two-thirds.”

“You, uh…” Matt tilted his head. “You seemed to have some trouble spelling your last name. Can you tell us why?”

He was improvising. Not a great idea with a seven-year-old unless he thought it would highlight something.

“I just haven’t had that name very _long_ ,” Ella admitted. “I know it, I just forgot how to spell it. Sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. How did you end up getting your name changed?”

She lifted her chin, eyes shining with pride. “I was adopted.”

Later, maybe, as she got older, adoption would become more of a complicated idea for her. For now, though, her delight in that statement of fact was simple and obvious. Marci noticed a few members of the jury exchanging small smiles.

“Can you tell us about that?”

“Um.” Her brow furrowed and she shot a glance towards the jury, obviously trying to remember which details were most important. It didn’t enhance her credibility, but, then, she was more useful as a witness for her emotional impact even if the jury didn’t believe every fact that came out of her mouth. “I used to live with my old mom and dad. But they weren’t good parents.” Her face darkened. Anger, sadness. No confusion, though. None of that. “Especially my dad.”

Matt leaned on his cane. “Can you tell us, in general terms, why your dad wasn’t a good parent?”

She closed her eyes and her voice became stiff, stilted. “He hurt me. Sometimes he hurt my mom.”

Matt nodded. “I’m sorry, Ella. I’m sorry he did that. But thank you for telling us. So did you ever tell anyone what your dad did?”

Eyes opening, she brightened. “You!”

His lips twitched. “Right, that’s true. Let’s back up a bit, though, so we don’t miss anything. Who’s the _first_ person you talked to about your dad?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said quickly. “My teacher. Mr. Moore. I think…I think that’s how I ended up at Everett’s.” She caught herself. “Everett’s Children’s Home,” she told the jury.

That was exactly the kind of specificity she should let Matt prompt from her. Providing it herself made it obvious she’d been coached. Marci tried not to worry about it.

“And that,” Ella went on more confidently as she connected the dots, “is how I met you! Everett’s asked you to come be a lawyer.”

“Can you talk about the time we first met?”

“You came to my house!” She frowned. “My old house. Where my old mom was. You talked to her, and then you talked to me. I showed you how I was hurt, all the bruises and my broken arm and everything, and told you my dad was why.”

“Objection, hearsay,” Tower interjected, much to the obvious disapproval of some of the jury members, whose eyes had widened upon hearing about the broken arm. Tower immediately looked like he regretted his decision.

“I’m not admitting this testimony for the truth of the matter asserted,” Matt responded calmly.

“Then what are you using it for, Counselor?” Lauria asked.

Matt’s face was towards the jury, but his nod in Ella’s direction was full of meaning. “To show trust.”

Lauria looked at Tower again, who fell back on a lame, “I reassert my objection.”

“Overruled,” Lauria ordered.

Matt turned back to Ella. “Ella, had you, at that point, told anyone else the specific kinds of things you told me that day?”

She shook her head vehemently. “No one.”

“Why did you tell me?”

She didn’t look at the jury and she didn’t smile. Her eyes were shockingly serious as they locked onto Matt. “You were hurt too.”

“What do you mean?”

“You had, um, bruises. Under your eye and on your cheek and chin.” She demonstrated, moving her hand to her own face, under her eye and along her jaw. “Like mine. I mean, I had bruises too. From my dad. And when you explained that my dad was bad for hurting me like that, I believed you. Because you’d been hurt too.”

“Thank you,” Matt said quietly. “I just have a few more questions. First, Ella, have we spent much time together since you were adopted?”

She nodded. “You come over to my house to hang out. We paint things and make things with clay. Foggy comes sometimes, too. We’re friends, all of us.”

He cleared his throat. “Now, do you know why I carry this cane and wear these glasses?”

She giggled, then clapped a hand over her mouth. “You’re blind,” she mumbled behind her hand.

He made a show of leaning forward. “Sorry, could you say that again more clearly?”

“You’re blind!” she all but yelled. “Sorry,” she added unapologetically at a normal volume.

Matt smirked. “And…you know what blind means, don’t you?”

“It means you can’t see,” she said loftily. “ _Anything_.”

“Ella, do you think I’m faking being blind?”

She giggled again. “Nope, because you always choose the dumbest colors when we’re painting stuff.”

He sighed audibly. “Any _other_ reason why you think I’m really blind?”

“Well, I’ve _seen_ your eyes, and they’re…weird. Not bad weird,” she added quickly. “But not like anyone else’s.”

He stood a little straighter now. “Ella, we’ve talked about me quite a bit, but I want to ask you about someone else. Daredevil. Do you know what we call Daredevil?”

“He’s a vigi—vila—sorry.” She winced at herself. “Um, he’s a _vigilante_.”

“Do you know what a vigilante is?” Matt asked.

“Someone who helps people. Someone who stops bad people from doing bad things,” she explained, then added solemnly, “usually by beating them up.”

“Have you ever interacted with Daredevil in the mask?”

“I, um…” She lowered her gaze to the table. “I got kidnapped once. Daredevil saved me.”

“All right,” Matt said slowly, “I want to ask you a few more questions about that. Can you go back in time? Tell us what you’re doing before you get kidnapped.”

Matt (and Foggy) both told Marci that the way Ella described her imaginary worlds was always poignant and whimsical. They were confident that, as long as she didn’t get too nervous or upset, she’d paint a powerful mental image for the jury. Marci was more skeptical. The child was only seven, and she usually wasn’t describing things so grim.

Ella took a deep breath. “Um. I’m at Everett’s.”

“What are you doing at Everett’s?”

“Playing in the front yard. It’s sunny outside, even though it’s kind of cold, because it’s not summer. There’s frost on the leaves on the ground.”

“Do you leave the front yard?”

“Yes,” she said, sounding a little guilty even now. “I see a cute dog. So I, um, I go past the fence even though I wasn’t supposed to, and…and that’s when they grab me.”

“Who grabs you, Ella?”

“A man. He’s with someone pretending to be his girlfriend or something, I think? He, um…he throws me in a van and they make me stay there. They make me fall asleep. When I wake up, I’m in a basement, tied to a chair so I can’t even move.” She hesitated, eyes flitting off to the side as she drifted into memory. “I’m cold and tired and scared. I thinking I won’t ever go back to Everett’s again.”

“Why are you scared?” Matt asked quietly.

Her voice was small. “I can’t see. It’s all dark everywhere. There’s a bright light shining in my face that’s way too bright and makes everything else even darker. There are other men there, too, walking around and t-talking about…about me. Saying _horrible_ things.”

“Does the light stay on?” Matt asked, directing her away from what the men were saying.

“No, it shuts off!” She looked almost excited now, bouncing forward in her seat. “I can’t see _anything_ until someone turns on a flashlight, and then I just see bits and pieces, because whoever has the flashlight got knocked down, and the flashlight is rolling on the ground.”

“What do you mean, knocked down? How does he get knocked down?”

“Daredevil shows up!” Now her voice rang with triumph. “He—I mean, you—you take out _all_ the bad guys, even in the dark, and then…” A smile spread across her face. “You pick up the flashlight even though you don’t need it and shine it on yourself so I know what you’re doing. And…and you take your mask off. So I can see your face. So I won’t be scared.”

Perfect. That was perfect.

“Are there other times you’ve interacted with Daredevil?”

“I, um…” It was hard to tell if she was blushing, but she dropped her gaze in obvious embarrassment. “I ran away once, and you found me and brought me back home to my parents. Oh! And…and another time, I got really sick from this, um, drug thing. It made me hear and see things that were…” Her voice faltered slightly. “Sad. And scary. But Daredevil found me and took me to my dad.” She glanced up. “My _real_ dad. Micah Vallier. Anyway. You—Daredevil helped me.” Her eyes flashed towards the jury. “I’m _glad_ Daredevil’s around.”

Matt opened his mouth to ask the next question, to ask about how the ways Matt Murdock helped her differed from the ways Daredevil helped her. But instead, he closed his mouth and seemed to come to a decision. He nodded once, as if to himself. Then he gave Ella a smile and lifted his chin towards the judge. “No further questions, Your Honor.” He turned his head towards Tower. “Your witness.”

There was a warning in those two words.

 

Matt

Tower didn’t seem quite as confident as usually when he made his way into the well, maybe because he’d registered the warning in Matt’s voice or maybe because he knew how it’d look if the district attorney ripped into an adorable little girl on the stand. Honestly, Matt was surprised he was crossing at all. Did he think he could convince the jury she was making everything up? Did he think he could get her to inadvertently smear Matt’s character?

It didn’t matter. Matt hadn’t lied to Marci and Foggy earlier; he _wasn’t_ worried about Tower. He was worried about the fact that Ella’s defense of him, of Daredevil, was about to be public record. And if something happened to her because of him, because she was trying to help him….

It was too late now. He simply had to do his best to make sure Ella couldn’t tell he was nervous. It was probably futile. She’d always been good at reading him.

“Hi, Ella,” Tower said, hands slipping nonthreateningly into his pockets. “Is it okay if I call you Ella?”

There was a long silence while Ella thought about it. “No,” she decided at last.

One of the jury members chuckled.

“Of course, Ms. Vallier,” Tower said smoothly. “I just have a few questions and I’ll try to keep it quick so we can all get out of here. First off, just to be clear, you would agree that Matt Murdock is Daredevil, wouldn’t you?”

Eyes darting towards Matt, she gave a guilty nod.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Vallier, but do you see that nice lady over there?” He gestured towards the court reporter. “She’s taking notes of everything that’s happening today, but she can only do that if you say your answers out loud. Can you answer me out loud?”

She bit her lip. “Um, yes. He’s Daredevil.” Then her head turned towards Matt and she whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“And you know something about what Daredevil does, right?”

“He stops bad guys,” she said firmly.

“Not because he asks them nicely, though, right?”

She looked disgusted with the question. “That wouldn’t _work_.”

“Ms. Vallier, you said you’ve got some new parents, right?”

She nodded, caught herself, and quickly said: “Yes.”

“What d’you think they’d do if you solved your problems the way Daredevil does?”

“Um.” Ella ducked her head a little and hid her hands under the table. “I’d get in trouble. A lot.”

Tower took a step forward, lowering his voice. “Thank you, Ms. Vallier. I have a couple more questions for you that might be a little difficult. Let me know if you need a break, all right?”

“I won’t,” she said flatly.

“Your biological father is no longer living,” Tower began.

“Objection!” Matt shouted. “Your Honor, the prosecution’s questioning is steering straight into inadmissible character evidence under rule 404.”

“This isn’t a propensity argument, Your Honor,” Tower responded immediately. “The prosecution is simply using this to show identity: that the man responsible for Kyle Conway’s death is the same as the man responsible for the injuries sustained by countless other civilians in Hell’s Kitchen.”

“The Kyle Conway case was already adjudicated,” Matt hissed. “The court accepted a self-defense argument. Any mention of it now is irrelevant and violative of rule 403.”

“Kyle Conway’s case is _extremely_ relevant,” Tower snapped. “It wouldn’t be, if the defense hadn’t turned identity into such a salient issue, but with the defense’s insistence on proving the identity of whoever injured the Metro-General victims, we need to use Kyle Conway, where the identity of his murderer was established, to make the connection.”

Matt curled his hands into fists. “Your Honor, I request a sidebar.”

“I’m inclined to agree with the prosecution on this one,” Lauria said, swiveling in her chair. “Mr. Tower, please—”

Matt stepped out from around the table, ignoring Marci’s whispers that he shut up and sit down. “Your Honor, I request a sidebar for the protection of this _seven-year-old witness_.”

That gave Lauria paused. She sighed. “Counselors, come here.”

Tower reached her first, leaning against the bench. Matt tried to bolt across the courtroom, but Marci got a grip on his arm, too tight for him to shake off without everyone noticing.

“Keep it together,” she muttered under her breath.

Matt didn’t respond.

“Well?” Lauria prompted, once all three lawyers were gathered in front of her.

“If the prosecution wants to use Kyle Conway’s death to prove identity, fine,” Matt growled. “But—”

“You’re withdrawing your objection?”

“No, for the record, I’m not _withdrawing my objection_ , but I’m telling you that it’s not appropriate to cross-examine a seven-year-old about the circumstances of her father’s death.”

Marci relaxed her grip on Matt’s arm and put her other hand on her hip. “Besides, Your Honor, I’m not sure what this witness can even say to go towards the identity issue.”

Tower cleared his throat. “If this witness is permitted to continue, I expect that she’ll tell the court the same story she originally told her parents, leading to Mr. Murdock’s first trial: that Mr. Murdock himself admitted to her his responsibility for her father’s murder. Beyond that, she should be aware of the cause of death.”

No, Tower was trying to flip the emotional appeal Ella provided by making the jury feel sympathy for the little girl who’d lost her dad, which would only work if his questions caused Ella to show distress about her dad’s death. Which meant his goal had nothing to do with identity and everything to do with upsetting Ella however possible.

Matt felt about two seconds away from punching him. “You should’ve called Conway’s ME, or, hell, asked _me_ while you had me on the stand. Ella isn’t qualified to talk about _any_ of that.”

Lauria curled her lip. “If the witness is unaware of the details, she can simply say so.”

“Judge.” Matt gripped his cane so tight he was sure his knuckles were white. “This isn’t about me right now. This is about protecting Ella.”

“You called her as a witness,” Lauria said dryly. “I assume you knew she’d be subject to cross?”

“I assumed _you_ would—”

Marci spoke over him. “Thank you, Your Honor. We understand.”

Matt squared his jaw, but fell silent as Lauria dismissed them. He let Marci lead him back to the defense table, but he was vibrating under his skin.

Tower returned to his place. “I’m so sorry about that, Ms. Vallier.”

“Is everything okay?” Ella asked tentatively.

“Everything’s fine. I just have a couple more questions for you, and I understand that these might be difficult to answer, so please take your time and tell me if you need a break. But these questions are very, very important. All right? Are you ready?”

She lifted her chin. “Of course I’m ready!”

“Good. Thank you. Now, Ms. Vallier, is it true that your father is no longer alive?”

“Micah’s my dad,” she retorted.

Tower hesitated before he clarified: “Your biological father.”

She tilted her head down towards the table for a moment, looking away. “Yeah. He’s, um…he’s dead.”

“You were told about how he died.”

“Um.” There was a soft sound as she bit her lip. “Yes. By this guy named Stone.”

Tower cocked his head, apparently thrown off. “Stone?”

Matt was on his feet again. “Objection, Your Honor. This is clearly delving into hearsay. Whatever this Stone person may have said was said out of court, and Tower is now using it for—”

“I’m not asking about what this Stone person said,” Tower interrupted. “I’m asking about what the defendant said, which is not hearsay according to rule 801d2.”

Lauria nodded. “If you only ask the witness about what Mr. Murdock may have said, I’ll overrule the objection. Go on.”

Matt sat.

“Ms. Vallier, Mr. Murdock talked with you about your father’s death, didn’t he?”

Ella sounded guilty and confused. “Um. Yes.”

Tower’s voice softened deceptively. “Did he apologize for what he did to your dad?”

“It wasn’t his _fault_ ,” she burst out. Under the table, one of her hands was fisting around the skirt of her dress.

“Ms. Vallier,” Tower said quietly, “I know this is difficult for you, but that wasn’t the question. Did Mr. Murdock apologize for what he did to your dad?”

She was quiet for about five seconds and Matt could taste the salt from the tears gathering in her eyes, though she didn’t let them fall. “Yes. He s-said…he said he didn’t want to make things harder for me. And he talked to me about how his dad died, too.”

What would Jack think of his son letting Tower do this to Ella?

“Do you know how your dad died?” Tower asked.

“He had hemophilia,” she explained, pronouncing the word without difficulty, like she’d heard it a thousand times already. “He wouldn’t stop bleeding.”

“Do you know why your dad was bleeding?”

Her heart beat faster. “Because he had a knife. He was running around with a knife…”

“But your dad didn’t use the knife on himself, did he?”

Suddenly, she was shouting. “Matt had to stop him! Matt had to stop him from hurting people!”

Tower’s voice softened to just above a whisper. “Matt stopped your dad by killing him.”

She wiped furiously at her cheeks as the tears spilled over.

“Objection!” Matt was on his feet again. “Your Honor, 403. Tower is deliberately giving the jury only half the story by neglecting to talk about the successful self-defense claim.”

“Sustained,” Lauria said. “Mr. Tower, please move on.”

“No need.” Tower stepped back. “I have no further questions.”

Ella sniffled loudly.

“Redirect?” Lauria prompted.

“No,” Matt said instantly. His first priority was getting Ella off the stand. His second priority was buying her all the hot chocolate he could find and paying for her next hundred or so therapy sessions.

“Wait,” Ella said, voice trembling. “Matt, wait.”

Lauria turned towards her. “Ms. Vallier, you may step down.”

“ _Matt_ ,” Ella whispered, too quietly for anyone else to hear. “ _I wanna say something_.”

The seconds Matt spent hesitating, torn between the desire to protect her and the desire to let her fight back, felt like an eternity. He tightened his fingers around his cane. “Actually, Your Honor…I’d like that redirect.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay right so as Heisey pointed out, Tower would probably be smartest to not bother crossing Ella at all, but, I mean, where's the drama in that?
> 
> Also, we just hit over 200k words! And I am treating myself to some kind of celebratory something.


	44. The Beauty of Grace is That It Makes Life Not Fair

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Be My Escape" by Relient K (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkHuUgJC1ok).
> 
> Hi everyone! It feels like it's been forever since I've updated. This weekend I've been competing at a mock trial competition (my team didn't advance, but we did have fun and I learned that I need to be okay with calling out pettiness from the opposing counsel). Anyway, I hope you enjoy this mostly character-driven chapter!

Matt

He stood in the center of the well, facing Ella and feeling the weight of every eye in the courtroom resting on the two of them. Ella’s sniffles were louder than any other sound. He had no idea what questions she wanted him to ask her, and she wasn’t offering any further whispered guidance.

So he’d have to do his best. “Ella, can you…can you tell us more about how you feel about your dad?”

With one final sniff, she drew herself up in her seat. “He’s _not_ my dad. He used to be, but he was…bad. He didn’t take care of me. He hurt me. And…and I know he hurt other people, too.”

“Did, uh…did anyone else ever try to stop him?”

“The police came a couple times. But none of them _did_ anything. Not really.”

He nodded slowly. “Now, you mentioned that Kyle Conway had hemophilia, and that he wouldn’t stop bleeding. Does that affect how you think about, uh…about how he died?”

She was already nodding back at him. “The smallest little cut would make him bleed and bleed and bleed. I know when he died, it was an accident. Except that _he_ brought the knife on purpose.”

“You said earlier that you thought I was just trying to stop him from hurting people?”

She nodded again. “Yes. Exactly.”

“What makes you think that?”

She took a deep breath. “Because that’s what you _do_.”

There, that was good. Not really worth a redirect, though, and more likely to make the jury disappointed in him for dragging this out, but he didn’t want to trap her with questions she wasn’t ready for. Matt opened his mouth to end this, but she noticed—she always did—and gave the slightest possible shake of her head. Her curls brushed against her shoulders.

More frustrated with the whole situation than with her, Matt took a calming breath and went for the most open-ended question he could possibly think of, just hoping Tower wouldn’t object that the question was beyond the scope of the cross (Matt couldn’t exactly argue the point since he had no idea what answer he was even trying to elicit). But, counting on the fact that Tower had gotten what he needed and would now steer clear of upsetting Ella more, Matt took a risk and asked, “Ella, how did you end up testifying today?”

When she answered, there was a note of satisfaction in her voice. “Oh, I asked you,” she explained sweetly. “It took a long time to get you to agree, and I had to go talk to Miss Marci and everything.”

“And why were you trying so hard to be able to testify?”

“Because _someone_ has to tell everyone how you’re doing a good job.” She drew herself up to her full height in her chair, folded her hands on the table, and spoke deliberately. “If you have to stop being Daredevil, all the people who need your help won’t have anyone to help them anymore. _Anyone_.”

“How do you know?” he asked more quietly.

She wet her lips. “Because there wasn’t anyone else when I was in that basement, and there wasn’t anyone else when I was sick from that drug. Just you. And— _and_ ,” she went on, when he opened his mouth to thank her because, really, that was enough, that was more than enough, “ _and_ if you have to stop being a lawyer, all the people who need your lawyer help won’t have anyone to help them either, because I needed you for that too and you were the one who actually got me to talk about…” She faltered for a moment, then took a deep breath and her voice rang out completely calm and crystal clear. “You got me to talk about all the _awful_ , _horrible_ things my old dad did to me back when I didn’t think any of that was bad at all, and _then_ you came and made me realize for the first time how everything he did really was bad and I didn’t deserve any of it. _Any_ of it. So.” Her head tipped up like she was daring anyone to challenge her.

Stunned, Matt blinked and realized that his throat had tightened inexplicably. “Uh…thank you.” He cleared his throat. “No, uh…no further questions, Your Honor.”

Ella gave a tiny nod of approval.

“Recross?” Lauria asked.

“No,” Tower said quickly, clearly eager to stay away from that landmine.

Lauria turned to Ella, voice softening probably unconsciously. “Ms. Vallier, you may step down.”

“Thanks!” Ella chirped, sliding off the chair and darting straight towards Matt. He gestured hastily for her to go past him and find her actual seat with her parents, but she course-corrected so late that he knew every member of the jury had seen it.

Oh, well. No one actually thought Ella _wasn’t_ biased towards him, did they? But if they needed any additional evidence that this little girl wasn’t scared of Daredevil…well, they had it. He made his way to his own chair, unable to entirely bite back a smile when he heard Ella whisper an apology under her breath as she found her place between Micah and Maeva. She vibrated with leftover adrenaline now that she’d said her piece.

“Anything else from the defense?” Lauria asked.

Standing up, Marci stood still for the space of one or two heartbeats. Matt wasn’t sure what she was doing. Looking at the jury? Glancing at her notes? Wondering if they’d missed something? Then she tilted her face towards Lauria. “No, Your Honor. The defense rests.”

And there it was.

 

Ella raced up to him as soon as they were released. “I did it! I did it!”

Crouching down to meet her, he buried his face in her hair, buying himself time to suppress his anxiety. She was so brave; she deserved to be celebrated without all his fears getting in the way. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“I wasn’t even that nervous! I was good, huh?” She wriggled back a bit so she could see his face. “…Matt?”

Quickly schooling his expression, he smiled. “Yeah, that was really great. I’m so proud of you. And I’m…I’m sorry about some of those questions, about…about your dad, and— _mmph_.” He made a noise of surprise as she smushed her hand against his mouth.

She spoke fast, not giving him the chance to say anything else. “So I was thinking after everyone forgives you, we could maybe go back to training and stuff? I wanna learn how to fight people. How to do it pro-por—proprot—”

He raised his eyebrows until she removed her hand, but he’d gotten the hint. No apologizing, no talking about her dad. “Proportionately,” he corrected gently.

“Yeah, that!”

“Sure thing. I’ve missed teaching you.” It was true, and it felt more urgent than ever. He tilted his head as he heard footsteps approaching at the other end of the hall: Micah. The last thing Matt wanted was a conversation with…anyone else, really. “Hey, Ella? There’s your dad, go ask him when we can train next.”

“Okay!” She grabbed his hand and took two steps towards Micah, but obviously she couldn’t drag Matt anywhere he didn’t want to go. “You coming?”

“Uh…I’ve gotta work on something. Let me know what he says, all right?”

“All right,” she said, a bit hesitant and a bit suspicious. “Matt? Are you okay?”

He opened his mouth to say he was fine, but she knew him better than that, and she deserved better than that. But Micah was getting closer, and Karen and Foggy were not far behind, and Matt needed…space. He took a risk. “Not really,” he admitted honestly, “but I will be.”

She was clearly not pleased with his answer. “Matt…”

“Go talk to your dad, okay? I’ll see you soon.” Ducking forward, he kissed her forehead, then stood up and unfolded his cane, relieved when for once she didn’t persist.

 

Foggy

Ella’s testimony ended late on a Friday, meaning closing arguments would have to wait until Monday. Which was why Foggy started his Saturday morning with a trip to Matt and Karen’s apartment. He already had a copy of an outline of an argument Marci had written, but it wasn’t really doing it for him. He thought he could do better, if he could just bounce ideas off someone more neutral than the person who’d written the original thing. Marci had looked equally affectionate and offended when she told him he should go talk to Karen.

Climbing up the stairs, he caught a delicious smell warming the hallway, seeping out from the apartment. Some kind of stir fry, probably? Foggy firmly adhered to the school of thought holding that stir fry was _not_ a breakfast food, but whatever, it smelled amazing and he hadn’t had breakfast yet. He hoped he wasn’t interrupting some kind of date dinner-breakfast-thing, but it was too late now, especially since Matt would’ve recognized his footsteps already. Which was why Foggy was a bit taken aback that he had to actually knock on the door.

But that was nothing compared to the shock as Frank Castle’s grizzled face greeted him once the door opened.

“Nelson,” Castle said in his gravely voice.

“Hi,” Foggy squeaked embarrassingly.

Swinging to the side, Castle held open the door. Foggy scuffled his feet for a second before getting up the nerve to duck past him. He found Karen curled up on the couch in the living room, wearing some kind of pale blue maternity dress that looked softer than a cloud and balancing her laptop on her knees. Castle followed him down the hall but veered off into the kitchen to poke at a pan on the stove, filled to the brim with stir fry and pasta. Foggy stared after him in disbelief.

“I was craving soy,” Karen explained matter-of-factly.

That didn’t explain why the Punisher had taken over the kitchen, but okay.

“Learned years ago to respect a woman’s cravings,” Castle said, fixing Foggy with a stare that Foggy couldn’t read.

“Uh, cool,” he managed. “Smells great.” He headed towards the couch. “Hey Karen, where’s Matt? I thought he was meeting us?”

“Um, I don’t know. I don’t think he’s come home from patrolling yet?”

 _Yet?_ It was like ten in the morning. “Is he hurt?” Foggy demanded.

Karen shook her head. “He texted me to say he was fine after I left like five voice messages. Said he was _thinking_.”

Foggy squinted. “The hell does that mean?”

She chewed on her bottom lip. “He’s been like this since he testified. Except for helping you move back home, I don’t actually know if he’s done anything social? I’ve checked with Stone, Jessica, Maggie, and Claire, and the Valliers, and none of them have seen him.”

Foggy opened his mouth to reply, but he was caught-off by the length of the list Karen had rattled off. Sure, if someone needed to find _Foggy_ , the list of people to check with would be three times that long. But for most of the time Foggy had known Matt, there would’ve been only one person on that list: Foggy.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” he said encouragingly. “He always gets weird about jury deliberations. You know that.”

Karen sighed gustily. “I guess. I just miss him.”

A _clanging_ sound from the kitchen made them both jump. Castle pushed the pan off the stove; now he was wiping his hands on his jeans as he headed out of the kitchen and down the hall.

“Where’re you going?” Karen called.

“To find altar boy.”

Foggy looked at Karen for an explanation. She simply smiled slowly and started typing again on her laptop. Before he could ask, the smile disappeared, replaced by a thin line of frustration between her eyebrows. “This stupid _Bugle_ article,” she muttered.

“The what, now?” Foggy couldn’t tell if his brain was glitching or if she was actually jumping around topics without warning.

“I’ve been keeping track of reports on the trial,” she explained, flipping her laptop around to show Foggy. “And most of what the _Bulletin_ says seems pretty accurate, all things considered. Same for most of the other news. Not too scandalous, mostly just the facts. But the _Bugle_ …”

Foggy leaned in closer to see and scowled. He still remembered the vitriol from the articles the _Bugle_ wrote about Spiderman. These articles about Matt were even worse. Probably because Daredevil tended to crack more bones and fewer jokes. Little to no accounts of the people Daredevil saved, nothing but detailed lists of injuries inflicted and dire warnings of the inevitable repercussions of letting “power-crazed, self-governed, vengeful vigilantes” run around unchallenged.

“And look.” Karen grabbed her laptop back, ran her fingers over the keyboard, and flipped it around again. “This is Juror Number Seven.”

It was a Facebook page, with numerous _Bugle_ articles shared, each captioned by snarky comments from the trial. Foggy felt his eyes widen, torn between shock that Karen had been stalking the jurors’ social media accounts and shock that this particular juror was violating his duty and engaging with the media. “We need to tell the judge.” It was late in the game to dismiss a juror, but that was what alternates were for. “Awesome work, Page.”

“Murdock,” she corrected.

Yeah…no. Foggy couldn’t call her that. _Murdock_ made Foggy think of Matt at Colombia, a bedraggled and half-asleep Matt shuffling around in nothing but sweatpants, hunting down an orange for breakfast. “Awesome work, Karen,” he corrected himself.

“Anyway.” Karen switched to a different screen. A Twitter account, this time, belonging to a different juror. “I just I wish I knew how much Number Seven told the other jurors. But none of them are posting their opinions all over the internet, so I can’t tell.” Clenching her jaw, she slammed her laptop closed.

Foggy winced. “You’re not planning on, like, actually spying on them, are you?” He couldn’t rule it out; this was Karen.

She shoved her hands into the pockets of her maternity dress. A maternity dress with _pockets_ , as she’d enthusiastically espoused a few days ago when she bought it. “Of course not. I just…I just feel like there’s something else I should be doing.”

Foggy raised his eyebrows. “Uncovering Number Seven’s bias isn’t enough?”

She chewed on her lip in a way that clearly expressed that no, it wasn’t enough.

Foggy scooted closer. “Hey. That really was awesome work. No one else caught that, and now there’ll be one less juror who hates Matt’s guts. Be proud of yourself.”

She did not look proud of herself.

Foggy nudged her in a way he hoped was encouraging. “You’re just like Matt, never wanting to stop fighting.”

She did not look encouraged. “It’s not that,” she said quietly, dropping her eyes away from his.

“Then what is it?”

“It’s just…this whole thing has been a mess? And Matt’s life is never gonna be the same again, no matter what the jury decides, because now everyone knows who he is, and it’s my—” She cut herself off, swallowing.

“It’s not your fault,” Foggy sad patiently. “It’s Fisk’s fault, and Vanessa’s fault. That’s what makes them bad guys.”

She looked sideways at him. “It’s not that simple, Foggy.”

 

Matt

_Assault at fifty-first and tenth. Female victim screaming. Two assailants._

He sent Brett the text. _Someone’s on it_ , Brett texted back. No telling if whoever it was would be able to help in time. Matt couldn’t even be entirely sure he had the right address; he was just guessing, trying to match the distance of her screams with his own memory of the city blocks.

The girl had stopped screaming.

He should get off the roof. Go home to brainstorm with Foggy and Karen, eat something, and maybe even fit a nap in somewhere. But he couldn’t. It was the Valliers’ roof and he had to be sure she was safe. (Frank barked when he arrived, alerted to his presence, but the Valliers simply fed her treats. None of them looked on the roof.) (Matt could take the puppy back now, he supposed, but he liked the idea of her watching over Ella.) In the meantime, he’d text Brett different locations and just…hope for the best.

This was such a _waste_. Surely the police realized that. Surely even Tower realized that.

He heard heavy footsteps approaching, preceded by the smell of gunpowder and…soy sauce? Steamed broccoli? Frank Castle climbed onto the roof behind him. “This is the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Hello to you, too.” Matt concentrated on the sounds far away. Someone was begging for help in Spanish, someone older, but he couldn’t—couldn’t quite figure out what the cross-streets should be. The voice was muffled, distorted. There was a _slam_ , and then then he couldn’t hear the voice, but he could hear an engine roaring to life.

“What’re you doing, anyway?”

“Listening,” Matt breathed. He sent Brett another text and didn’t get a response, so he pulled out his phone to call 9-1-1. “I’d like to report a kidnapping. Older adult victim, Spanish-speaking. Not a big vehicle, some kind of sedan, probably. Going, uh, north on twelfth.” He thought. He hoped.

“Model?” the operator prompted. “Color?”

“No clue.” Matt hung up. This really was pathetic.

“Shit,” Frank muttered. “You can hear all that?”

“Not if you keep talking.”

“That’s how you do it, huh?”

“Thought you didn’t care.” Matt gave up on Frank ever shutting up. Not that it mattered; Matt couldn’t help people like this anyway.

Frank came to stand behind him in what would definitely be a startling sight if any of the suburban parents happened to look at the Valliers’ roof. “What, you just echolocate your way around a fight?”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“Always is, with you. So how many of those shitbags you’re listening to are ones you’ve dealt with before? And now they’re back on the streets.”

Matt clenched his jaw.

“I thought if you crossed over to my side of the line, you’d never get to come back from that. But you crossed, and you came right back.”

This again. “I didn’t mean to kill Conway.”

“And that’s all that matters, huh?”

Well, no. For every crime, there was the act as well as the intent. But, well, sometimes the _why_ mattered more than the _what_. Not…not in terms of consequences. The people who’d lost their lives (to Frank, to Karen, to _Matt_ ) weren’t ever gonna get another chance to be better, make amends, ask for forgiveness.

But in terms of the souls of the perpetrator, maybe it did matter?

But where did that leave Karen, who’d intended to take Vanessa’s life?

Matt gave his head a sharp shake. Since Vanessa’s death, he’d been so focused on keeping Karen safe and getting Foggy back and dealing with his own trial that he’d managed, for the most part, to avoid thinking about that. He really needed to sleep. “Why’d you come here, Frank?”

“How long’re you gonna sit on this roof? You can’t watch over the girl forever.”

Matt would never choose to bear his soul to Frank Castle, so maybe it was the exhaustion that caused him to give an actual explanation. A partial one, at least. “When people die because of me, I as good as kill them.”

“The hell you talking about?”

Figuring out how to connect that idea to why he was here on Ella’s roof seemed exhausting. “Forget it.”

Frank scoffed. “Not a chance. You just said one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard you say, and I’ve heard you say a lot of stupid shit.”

“Forget it, Frank.”

“What d’you mean, they die _because_ of you? You kill ’em?”

Matt listened to the sounds of the city waking up, more slowly on a Saturday than on a weekday and let his mouth answer without really thinking about it. “I mean…they die because of my mistakes.” Like Sullivan. “Or…they die to help me.” Like Vladimir. Like _Elektra_. Like….

“Shut up.”

Matt picked at a piece of a shingle. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

“I’m serious,” Frank growled. “Stop talking before I—”

“What, shoot me in the head again?” At least losing his hearing would give him something else to freak out about rather than the new, preemptive guilt tying itself around his throat.

He heard the scuffing sound of heavy boots moving across the roof, and suddenly Frank was crouching on one knee, holding himself stiffly beside Matt. “Overseas, in the military, you know how many brothers died right next to me ’cause they wanted me to live? You saying I killed them?”

He was completely misunderstanding. “I’m saying—”

“What about my family that night, huh? When I couldn’t—couldn’t protect them, when I _failed_ them? You saying that means I might as well have pulled the trigger?”

Matt figured it was better not to reply to that.

“Shit, Red.” Frank’s voice lowered, tinged with the pained honesty Matt recognized from the graveyard. “I hear that enough in my own head, I don’t needa hear it from _you_. ’Cause it’s not true, you hear me? We say it to ourselves, but it’s not true. And if you can’t stop saying it to yourself, don’t you dare say it again in front of me.”

Matt could respect that. And if Frank really had managed to come to a place where he could fight off the blame for what happened…good for him.

Frank rolled his head on his neck with an aggravated sigh. “You’re not listening.”

“Hard to do anything else, actually.”

“Yeah? You listening, Red? You listening?” Frank leaned in closer. “Stuff your face on some humble pie and get over yourself.”

Matt jerked his head back. “Excuse me?”

“Sometimes shit just happens and it’s not about you. Not your fault, nothing you coulda done to change it. Just life.” He stood up. “Your wife misses you, Red. Stop hiding.”

“I’m not—” Matt cut himself off. He wasn’t hiding, but that didn’t mean he shouldn’t go home to Karen. It wasn’t like he heard anything on the streets to make him think Ella was a target. He heard _Daredevil_ thrown around a lot by miscreants a night, and sometimes the more disconcerting _Matt Murdock_ , but no mention of Ella. Slowly, letting his stiff limbs take their time, Matt stood up. “Yeah.”

“Yeah, what?” Frank pressed. “You’re going home?”

“I was going to go back anyway,” Matt mumbled. “Not because you told me to.”

Frank barked out a startled laugh with just a tinge of sadness. “You sound like my kids.”

Unable to think of a rebuttal, Matt made his way to the edge of the roof and took a bit more care than usual jumping down. A block away, though, he paused and tilted his head. He could still hear Frank on the Valliers’ roof. Lingering.

Keeping vigil.

 

Foggy

Over the next ten minutes, Foggy found out just how busy Karen had been over the past few days. Not only had she been pouring through the _Bugle_ ’s articles, she was also responsible for pushing Ellison to respond with the more accurate _Bulletin_ articles, and she’d even found a couple of other people Daredevil had saved who, while not willing to testify in court, were willing to make a statement to the _Bulletin_ if they only gave their first names. The first testimonial was due to print tomorrow.

“I know it’s too late,” she said bitterly, “but—”

“It’s not too late,” Foggy interrupted, ignoring his growling stomach. Breakfast seemed a long way off despite the tantalizing smells from the kitchen. “Even if the rest of the jurors are doing what they’re supposed to and not looking at media, which is a big _if_ , by the way, it’ll still make sure the rest of Hell’s Kitchen is on Matt’s side. Which’ll be extra important once the trial’s over and he goes back to being a lawyer.” After dealing with the New York Bar, which had been suspiciously quiet so far.

Karen just huffed a dissatisfied breath and slumped in her seat.

“Karen, seriously, you’ve done a lot. Maybe…relax, a bit?”

“Relax?” she exclaimed, jerking upright.

Foggy flinched backwards reflexively. “Poor choice of words. I do that occasionally, contrary to copious evidence.”

“ _Relax_.”

“Not what I meant,” he said hurriedly. “I just mean…I feel like there’s something else going on here. Besides you just trying to help.”

“Do _not_ psychoanalyze me right now, Foggy.”

He ignored the warning. “Are you trying to make up for Matt being put on trial? If you think it’s your—”

Karen made a sudden hissing sound, eyes darting past him. Foggy twisted around on the couch to see Matt standing, silent and ghostlike, at the foot of the stairs, dressed in black with his hair afluff and his mask in his hands.

Foggy winced. “How much of that did you hear?”

Matt raised his eyebrows, silently asking, _how much do you think?_ Then he walked straight across the room and took Karen in his arms, dropping his forehead against hers. “I’m sorry.”

She opened her mouth like she was about to protest, which was stupid because she was literally getting what she wanted. Sure enough, she apparently thought better of it. She melted against him. “I’ve missed you.”

“I, ah…I heard. Sorry.”

She pulled back enough to look at him. “What were you out…thinking about?”

Sighing, he tipped his head back as if staring up at the ceiling. “I was just making sure Ella’s okay. I haven’t heard anything yet, but it’s only a matter of time before someone takes out their frustrations with Daredevil on her.”

Foggy coughed. “That’s very conclusory, Matt.”

“Is it?” He pointed at Foggy. “You got shot because of me.”

“Because of me,” Karen argued.

“You.” He pointed at her. “Caught in a crossfire. Because of me.”

“Because of _me_ ,” she insisted.

Foggy was too hungry to deal with the two of them. “Matt, I was _just_ talking with her about how this is the bad guys’ fault. Would you both just get over yourselves for two seconds and realize that not every bad thing that happens in this world is because of you and you’re not powerful enough to fix all the bad things, and I really can’t believe I’m saying this to you, Matt, because you’re supposed to be Catholic enough to know _you’re not God_.”

Matt blinked once, twice. “Huh.”

Foggy squinted at him suspiciously. “What? There’s no way I just caused a philosophical breakthrough after all the years you’ve spent nurturing a messiah complex on top of a martyr complex on top of a—”

“You just agreed with Frank Castle.”

Foggy choked on his own saliva. “Well…then…I guess Frank Castle is, uh, right…in this one, singular instance.”

Karen snorted, the tension in her shoulders fading somewhat.

“I have an idea,” Foggy announced, looked between the two of them. “We’re going to try something groundbreaking.”

“What, like having a normal day?” Matt suggested sardonically.

Ha, ha. “ _Exactly_ ,” Foggy said, enjoying Matt’s surprised expression. “The three of us are going to sit here and just…be small.”

“Small,” Karen echoed skeptically.

“You heard me,” Foggy said sternly. “Small. No tearing down criminal organizations, no beating up the mob, no weight-of-the-world-on-your-shoulders, no stewing in regret. We’re gonna sit here and just be tiny little humans eating pasta.”

Karen blinked at Matt, who blinked back uncannily.

Foggy rubbed at the back of his neck. “And, yeah, I know this won’t rewire either of your brains and maybe neither of you guys are really at the point of forgiving yourselves for every catastrophe you haven’t fixed yet,” he admitted. “But it’s a start, right?”

Neither of them protested, nor did they seem to want to, and that was how, five minutes later, the three of them were sitting around the living room munching on stir fry and pasta from large bowls, soaking up the sunlight pouring in from the massive windows. Foggy wasn’t dumb enough to think he’d banished the guilt they both continually wrestled with, but they were at least trying to engage in the conversation that Foggy kept firmly light-hearted.

“My hair looks great,” he was currently arguing proudly, running his hand over the buzzed part. “All the cool kids have shaved patches these days.”

“No, they don’t,” Karen laughed.

“Not in the back, anyway,” Matt added.

“How would you know?” Foggy protested.

Matt just shrugged.

“What color is my shirt?” Foggy demanded, just to be safe.

Matt scrunched his forehead in thought. “Pinkish.”

Foggy shot Karen a startled look.

“I’m right?” A grin broke across Matt’s face. “I’m totally right, aren’t I?”

Karen leaned against him, chin propped on his shoulder. “You’re exactly right, and he looks very good.”

When Matt’s hand drifted over to rest on her stomach, Foggy thought he’d be happy to drink in the sight of the two of them forever. They could figure out how to deal with the rest of the trial and whatever aftermath came their way later—this, right here, was more important.


	45. We Could Move Mountains if We Only Tried

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SORRY THIS CHAPTER IS SO LONG
> 
> Closing arguments ahead; brace yourself for long paragraphs of text, I'm so sorry.
> 
> Chapter title from "Possibilities" by Memphis May Fire (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_e9IKa8Nc8).

Karen

She must’ve dozed off— _in the middle of the day_ —because the next thing she was aware of was lying more or less sideways on the couch, head on a pillow in Matt’s lap, feeling the warmth of his hand running up and down her arm, hearing Matt and Foggy’s low voices murmuring above her head.

“Are you sure?” Matt was saying softly.

“Are _you_ sure?” Foggy asked.

“You don’t have to.”

“I know. I want to.”

Karen cracked her eyes open. It was hard to see Matt from this angle, but she could see Foggy leaning forward where he was sitting across from them, hands on his knees, eyes locked onto Matt, brow furrowed earnestly.

Suddenly, Matt’s hand moved up her arm to tuck her hair back behind her ear. “I know you’re awake.”

“Mmm, you caught me.” She shifted, getting more comfortable. “What’re you guys talking about?”

Matt started playing absently with her hair. “Closing arguments.”

“Yeah? Any last-minute brainstorms?”

“Actually, it was more about…well.”

Karen narrowed her eyes. She recognized the look on Matt’s face: the look he got whenever someone was doing something for him that he didn’t think he deserved, but that he couldn’t bring himself to reject. It was a very rare look—not because he thought he deserved so many things but because he usually found it all too easy to reject every kindness. “About what?”

“Foggy wants to give the argument.”

Karen sat up, abandoning the very nice feeling of Matt’s hand in her hair in favor of staring at Foggy. “Wait, what?”

Foggy huffed. “Wow, no need to be so enthusiastic. It’s just an idea. Besides, I only wanna do it if it’ll actually help to have me instead of Marci.”

Matt opened his mouth, then frowned and tipped his head to the side. “That’s a lie.”

“What?” Foggy spluttered. “I’m not lying. You think I’m lying about this?”

Matt shot him a pointed look.

“Ugh,” Foggy mumbled. “Just because someone’s not telling the whole truth doesn’t mean they’re lying, which I hope you know for the next time you try to interrogate a drug dealer.”

“Then what’s the whole truth?” Matt asked quietly.

Foggy scrunched up his face in frustration. “Look, man, it’s your case. I don’t wanna screw it up. And Marci’s good. She’s really, _really_ good. It’s just that…it would really mean a lot to me to get up there and tell all those people what a hero you are, that’s all.” Then he grimaced. “Sorry, I know none of this is about me, but I also think…like, on the facts, you’re a hero.”

Matt had opened his mouth, probably to protest being called a hero, but no sound came out.

“And Marci knows that,” Foggy swept on, “especially after you saved our lives, but I’ve, you know, _lived_ it. More than she has. And…” He sat up straighter, squaring his shoulders. “And you’re my best friend.”

Karen would blame the hormones, but she felt herself getting choked up. Matt stared wide-eyed in Foggy’s direction, mouth still open from when Foggy had cut him off.

“And please don’t say anything about it putting me in danger,” Foggy said abruptly, like it was a crucial point he’d almost forgotten to mention. “Trust me, that ship has _sailed_.”

Matt dropped his eyes away. “I know.”

“Which is _not_ me blaming you! Please don’t make me echo Frank Castle again.”

“No, all right.” Matt pressed his lips together like he wasn’t quite giving himself permission to smile. “I get it.”

“So, um.” Foggy tilted his head in a strange mirror of Matt. “What d’you think?”

Swallowing, Matt scratched awkwardly at the back of his ear, and then…nodded.

Foggy shot Karen an uncertain glance, then turned back to Matt. “Uh, you just nodded, and I don’t know what that means? I mean…I’m gonna need your verbal assent here, buddy.”

Matt opened his mouth, but it took at least three seconds before he was able to say, “…Okay.”

Foggy beamed. “Great. Awesome. So we just need to file your, um…” His eyes trailed off, looking for the words.

“Notice of appearance as additional counsel,” Matt supplied softly.

“Yeah, yeah, that. You know, as long as Marci’s okay with me jumping in on her case.”

Matt shrugged. “She’ll be glad to have one less thing to do, so she can focus on her real cases.”

Karen laughed, only to realize that Matt didn’t look like he was joking. “Wait, you’re serious?”

“Well, yeah. She didn’t ask to deal with any of…” He gestured vaguely, “…this.”

Foggy scooted forward. “You think this is just a job to her?”

Matt instantly looked like he realized he’d said the wrong thing. His head swiveled between Karen and Foggy before he said, questioningly, “No?”

Foggy breathed an exaggerated sigh of relief. “Good answer, buddy, because otherwise I’d have to rethink having you be my best man at the wedding, since obviously I can’t have a best man who _doesn’t know Marci at all_.”

“Right,” Matt said quickly, “right,” and then he seized the chance to whisper to Karen, as Foggy stood up and headed into the kitchen, “did you know Marci thought that way?”

She smiled. “It’s been pretty obvious, Matt.”

He looked vaguely like someone had hit him over the head with a frying pan.

Foggy returned with glasses of water for all of them (no alcohol, which Karen appreciated), and plunked back down in his chair. But Matt cocked his head towards his best friend. Foggy scowled at him. “Shut up about my heartbeat.”

“I didn’t say anything!”

“But you’re about to.”

“No, I swear,” Matt said innocently.

Foggy relaxed slightly, which was Karen’s cue to jump in: “What’s up with your heartbeat, Foggy?”

“You two are _terrible_ influences on each other,” Foggy groaned. “I’m just kind of nervous, now that he said yes to the dress. And by dress, I obviously mean my brilliant closing argument.

Matt and Karen stared at him in disbelief. “ _Nervous?_ ”

“Maybe you forgot, but I was shot in the head like two months ago, and I’m still not sure if I’m actually not tracking stuff or if both of you live such ridiculous lives that nothing makes sense anyway, and I forget words, and—”

“Not often,” Karen said soothingly.

“Feels often.”

Without warning, Matt slid off the couch to sit cross-legged on the floor. “I have an idea. Foggy, come here?”

Clearly bemused, Foggy nevertheless moved to sit opposite him. “Are we…playing pattycake?”

Matt flashed that specific too-broad, surprised grin that only Foggy could elicit. “Uh, no. I just thought, well, meditation helps me focus.”

“I don’t think they’ll let me sit down like this in the courtroom.”

“But the basic technique could still help,” Matt insisted, leaning forward a bit, eyes focused somewhere around Foggy’s left ear. “Come on, I wanna teach you this.”

Foggy didn’t seem convinced that anything groundbreaking would come of it, but he played along, sitting silently and listening to Matt’s murmured instructions: how to sit, how to breathe, what to think about. Karen watched them from the couch, not daring to move lest she disrupt them. Although Matt had been excited to share some of his training with Karen, and coaxed into teaching Ella some of what he could do, as far as Karen knew he’d never offered to teach Foggy anything he’d learned from Stick. And Foggy had never asked.

It took a while for Foggy to settle into whatever headspace Matt wanted, as evidenced by Matt’s comments every once in a while (“Focus, Foggy,” “Stop thinking about your breathing so much,” “Pick a different sensation to ground yourself with,”), but once he had, Karen edged carefully off the couch to form a triangle with them. She remembered Stone teaching her to meditate in his apartment, hoping it would ward off morning sickness. It hadn’t, but it had helped.

Matt’s lips curved upwards when she joined them. “You’re good at this.”

“Karen’s good at everything,” Foggy grumbled.

“ _Focus_ , Foggy.”

Karen wasn’t sure how long they sat there, together, but she was really fading into the peace of it when Matt suddenly stood up, jolting her out of it despite the smoothness of his movements. Eyes still closed, he moved dreamlike towards the stairs.

“Matt?” Karen whispered.

“No worries.” He made his way to the landing and opened the door to Stone, framed in the doorway. His dark hair was growing out again, but he didn’t have any immediately-visible weapons and his black jacket looked…almost new. “Where’s Dex?” Matt asked.

Stone brushed past him. “At the gym.”

“Are you sure that’s—”

“He’s fine,” Stone said dismissively. “I’ve been leaving him alone more, and he hasn’t caused any trouble. What were you doing that it took you so long to notice me?” He glanced from Karen on the couch to Foggy sitting on the floor.

“We were meditating.” Slipping ahead Stone, Matt led the way down the stairs.

“You mean sleeping, if you didn’t realize how close I was until I was on your roof.”

“I was focused on Foggy’s heartbeat.”

Stone shook his head ruefully. “And that, Matty, is exactly why Stick would say you’re soft.”

Karen and Foggy stiffened, but Matt rested his hands lightly on his hips. “Yes,” he said simply.

Stone’s eyebrows pinched together, but he couldn’t seem to come up with a response.

“You’re welcome to join us,” Matt offered, doing a poor job at stifling his smirk.

“I can’t stay long; I don’t normally leave Dex alone for more than an hour or so.” Stone pulled out a knife—about time, too—and twirled it between his fingers. “I wanted to talk to you about him, actually.”

“The trial’s going great, Stone,” Karen said dryly. “Thanks for asking.”

Stone threw her a glare. “Good to hear,” he told Matt begrudgingly. “About Dex. Your trial’s almost over, yes? Because I think…” He hesitated, eyes flicking towards Foggy and Karen.

“You want me to talk to him,” Matt guessed. “What, is he getting _worse?_ ”

“No. But he’s far from…”

“From what?”

“Being soft?” Foggy suggested from his spot on the floor. “Which, you know, can actually be a good thing?”

Stone curled his lip at Foggy.

Karen stood up, stretching her neck. “Actually, Stone, it’s kind of amazing you’ve kept him stable for this long. No shame in wanting more people to help.”

Matt sighed. “Yeah, but he needs a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist. Not…” He jerked his head as if indicating himself.

“He can’t go and sign up to see a therapist,” Stone snapped. “Not without getting caught and incarcerated.”

“Any decent lawyer would raise his mental illness as a defense or partial defense. If the jury buys it, he might be civilly committed at a psychiatric hospital.”

“And then what? He’d meet with whatever stranger is assigned to him?”

“A _licensed_ stranger,” Matt pointed out. “What exactly are you objecting to here?”

Stone seemed to wrestle with himself for a moment before spitting out: “They won’t understand him.”

Oh. Karen bit her lip. Stone wasn’t just talking about someone with experience working with people like Dex. He was talking about a much, much deeper kind of understanding.

“Very few people could understand him,” Matt said carefully. “Those that can are probably the last people he should be talking to. He needs a north star, not another…sunken ship.”

Matt wasn’t a sunken ship and Karen almost interrupted to say so, and she was sure Foggy was about to say that too, but they both managed to keep their mouths shut. This was between Matt and Stone.

Stone’s expression darkened.

“Stone…” Matt stepped closer, head tilted in concern. “You can’t fix him. Neither of us can.”

“You don’t believe that.”

Matt raised his eyebrows.

“You don’t believe that about him, just like you don’t believe that about _me_.”

“You wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near him if he were incarcerated, and I wouldn’t be allowed to represent him given the conflicts of interest. It’s not about belief. It’s about…logistics.”

“It’s not about logistics,” Stone spat. “You just don’t want to mess up your perfect little life with—”

Matt grabbed his arm. “Stone, _stop_.” Stone visibly seized up under Matt’s grasp and Karen half expected him to hit him, but the strike never came. “Listen. I know what you’re talking about, all right? I _know_. Seeing someone like Dex who…who’s broken and dangerous but still a _person_ …it’s hard to let them go.” A muscle in his jaw flashed as he clenched it. “But if you twist your life around just to try to make him better, you’ll miss out on living your own life. I don’t…I don’t want that for you.”

Stone exhaled sharply. “Of course you don’t.” With that, he spun on his heel.

“Stone—”

It was too late; the door slammed shut behind him.

 

Foggy

Foggy didn’t realize that volunteering to give the defense’s closing argument would cause a time warp to Monday. He spent the rest of Saturday and all of Sunday going through all the notes from the trial, comparing everything to Marci’s original opening statement, and piecing it together into something he thought would make sense. But he also couldn’t silence the niggling worry that he was _missing_ something.

And then, without warning, he found himself in the courtroom, straightening a tie he felt like was choking him and wishing he could convince Matt to wear earplugs so he couldn’t hear Foggy’s heart trying to beat its way out of his chest. It was just kinda hard to radiate an aura of “I’m fine, I’ve got this, don’t worry” when Matt could definitely tell Foggy wanted to throw up in front of all these people.

It was great to be sitting at the counsel table again, but _why_ did he fight so hard for this?

He fidgeted while Lauria dismissed the jury Karen had investigated, and he fidgeted while the alternate juror was called, and he fidgeted when Lauria asked if the lawyers were ready for closing arguments, and he felt Marci rest a hand on his knee. Making a conscious effort to hold still, he watched Tower stand and take his place, but this time one of his assistants also wheeled a screen into the well beside him. Tower slipped one hand into his pocket, but the other held a clicker, poised to advance the presentation queued up on the screen.

The jury members looked attentive. No one was falling asleep during the trial of Daredevil.

“Members of the jury.” Tower started off with a gentle voice. Velvet. Not the voice of a prosecutor, but of a storyteller. “A young man is walking alone late at night. He just got off a graveyard shift. He’s tired, and hungry, and he wants to go home and sleep so he can start the day again tomorrow. Instead, he wakes up two days alter in the hospital. His attacker’s identity is widely known, but no one questions the attacker’s methods or motives, and the attacker walks free the very next night.”

Tower inclined his head. “If the attacker were anyone but Daredevil, I think we all know what would happen here. The city would be in an uproar once this kind of story became normal. Instead, because Daredevil helped take down a crime lord like Wilson Fisk, we’ve all given Daredevil a blank check. But that stops today. Members of the jury, that stops with you. Today. Because you’ve seen the evidence. You know that Daredevil is not a hero—he is nothing more than a vigilante.”

Foggy looked down at the papers in front of him, Marci’s notes mixed with his own. That vigilante-not-a-hero line was Tower’s theme, the thing Foggy had to flip on its head, the thing Foggy had to tear down and replace with what was true.

“Now,” Tower went on, “the State of New York bears the burden of proof, meaning that the State must prove the defendant’s guilt by beyond a reasonable doubt. I have to prove that the defendant is guilty of strangulation and assault of his own fellow citizens, and menacing and assault of police officers. And since the defendant claims to have acted in defense of others, I also have to show why this is untrue. But as your district attorney, I do not shy away from this burden or from my responsibility. Instead, I embrace the opportunity to help make this city safer—with your help.”

Blah, blah.

“Let’s see how the evidence matches with the law. We’ll start by talking about the defendant’s affirmative defense. As you’ll see in your jury instructions, defense of others only applies where the defendant’s actions are necessary actions taken in response to an imminent threat—and go no further.”

The three elements flashed up on the screen.

“First, let me show you why the defendant’s actions were never necessary.” Tower’s voice sharpened. “The defendant insisted today that even if we don’t always like his methods or his motivations, we’d better put up with it because we need him. Why does he say we need him? Why does he insist that his actions are necessary? The defendant pointed time and again to the failings of the NYPD.” Tower shook his head. “That argument just isn’t good enough. The fact that the officers of the NYPD are only human, meaning they can’t be anywhere and everywhere at once, doesn’t give Daredevil the right to become his own police force any more than it gives the rest of us the right to walk up and down the streets with machine guns, no matter how much we insist that we’re just trying to protect people.” He raised the clicker, hit a button…and the first element crossed itself out.

“Second, let me show you why the evidence does not suggest that the defendant’s actions were in response to an imminent threat. Yes, some witnesses who took the stand over the past few days talked about imminent threats.” Tower coughed politely. “But who were those witnesses? Karen Murdock, the defendant’s _wife_ as well as someone who used to work as a secretary in his law firm. If there’s anyone who can and will articulate facts in the light most favorable to the defendant, it’s his wife. Then there’s Claire Temple—basically the defendant’s own personal nurse. She admitted under oath that she’s violated policies at Metro General—in the emergency room, no less—thereby risking both her job and people’s _lives_ …just to help the defendant! Of course she’d take the stand and tell whatever story he comes up with for her. And then…” His voice softened. “And then there’s Miss Ella Vallier. A little girl who said Daredevil saved her life twice. And maybe he did, members of the jury, but before he saved her life, he used the law to protect her—as he should. And now of _course_ he’s her hero, of _course_ she’ll try to get her out of trouble.”

Tower narrowed her eyes. “What about the other people, ordinary citizens with no ties to Daredevil until we run into him at night? What stories would those people tell? Let’s go back to that young man I mentioned. It’s not hard to understand _how_ he ended up in the hospital—he was beaten within an inch of his life. But they _why_ …that’s much more interesting.” Tower paused. “No, it’s frightening. Because we _don’t know_ why that young man was selected for an attack.”

Abruptly, Tower fell silent, as if inviting the jury to invent their own explanations. When he finally began to speak, each word was slow, quiet, and deliberate. “Maybe, as the defendant begs us to believe, that young man was a threat. But maybe that young man was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe an enemy of his knew framing him for a crime would make him one of Daredevil’s targets. Or…maybe that young man was the wrong race, ethnicity, religion, or had the wrong sexual orientation or sexual identity, and Daredevil seized the opportunity to unleash his personal prejudices through violence.” Tower glanced towards Matt. “The fact is, we just don’t know which threats Daredevil faces are imminent…and which are imagined or invented.”

 _Click._ The second element of Matt’s defense was crossed out.

Even though Foggy fundamentally disagreed with literally everything Tower was saying…it was a bit depressing. Especially with how intently the jury was staring at him, and yeah, one or two looked disgruntled, but several offered tiny, grim nods. The rest were unreadable.

“And finally,” Tower said, “let’s talk about proportionality. Even if you think the defendant’s actions are necessary, and even if you think those actions are against an imminent threat, you simply cannot look at the evidence and conclude that his actions are proportional. But don’t just take my word for it.” He raised the hand holding the remote; on the screen, the slide with the elements was replaced by medical reports flicking past, one by one, in a never-ending loop. “Broken bones, spilled blood. Head trauma. You heard from Dr. Rowe about the extent of the damage Daredevil does, and when you go back to deliberate, I urge you to look closely at these reports. But you don’t need to rely on the medical reports and Dr. Rowe’s testimony.” He turned, pointed straight at Matt. “You know how far the defendant goes because you heard him admit to it himself. You heard what he did to Felix Manning!” Tower started pacing feverishly. “Two broken bones, a broken windpipe, and bruising around the neck, all inflicted on a sixty-eight-year-old man who was in no danger of causing anyone immediate harm. The defendant _tortured_ Felix Manning just because he thought he could get away with it. And that’s not all. Force can be used to protect someone else from an imminent threat. But that wasn’t true of Felix Manning. And if it wasn’t true of Felix Manning, it means Daredevil was acting as a vigilante—not a hero.”

Then, abruptly, Tower held perfectly still. “And you heard him admit to using the knife that took Kyle Conway’s life, the life of Miss Ella Vallier’s father.” He waited, let those words sink in and twist around in everybody’s brains. When he started going again, his pace was brisk. “Now, I’m not arguing that Kyle Conway was a good man. I’m not arguing that anyone would’ve been better off if he’d lived. But the fact is, the defendant killed him in the streets of Hell’s Kitchen because the defendant couldn’t control himself.” Tower took a breath. “The defendant claimed, at the time when he was caught, that he acted in self-defense. But we know the truth now. We know that the mighty Daredevil was _never_ in danger from a middle-aged drunk. So why, members of the jury, did the defendant choose to use a deadly weapon? A _knife?_ Because the defendant lost control and took it too far. He—”

Foggy couldn’t help it; he stood up. “Objection, Your Honor!” Tower wasn’t allowed to argue that because Matt pulled a knife on someone in the past, it made him more likely to pull a knife now.

Tower arched an eyebrow.

Lauria looked at Foggy the way a cat might look at an annoying fly. “404, I presume? I realize you were brought onto this case in the twilight hours, Mr. Nelson, but I already overruled that objection and I’ll overrule it again.”

Foggy had forgotten how much he hated Lauria. And he’d forgotten how much Lauria hated him.

“Thank you,” Tower said demurely, facing the jury once more while Foggy tried not to slump in his seat. “As I was saying, the defendant lost control and took it too far, and then he used all his defense attorney experience to think up a justification later. Now, the defendant’s lawyers don’t want me to tell you this, because they know it proves that the defendant’s motive was never about defending—only attacking. That’s not being a hero." He crossed off the last line of Matt's defense. "That’s being a vigilante.”

“It’s fine,” Matt whispered. After all, technically, Tower _was_ allowed to use what happened with Conway as evidence of Matt’s intentions.

Tower started moving again, pacing back and forth in front of the jury at just the right speed. “It’s clear that the evidence does _not_ show that the defendant was ever acting in defense of himself or others, but let’s talk about what the evidence _does_ show. First, it shows that the defendant is guilty of assault and strangulation of other citizens in Hell’s Kitchen, and of menacing the brave officers of the NYPD as well as assault of those officers. Let’s go through these one by one.” Tower advanced the PowerPoint until the jury instructions for assault in the first degree appeared on the screen—an empty box next to each element.

“Let’s start with the crimes against civilians.” Tower detoured briefly to snatch up the medical records left on his desk. “We’ve shown that on four separate occasions, the defendant caused serious physical injury to these four victims. We know it was the defendant who did it for several reasons. Take a look at the reports…” He clicked the PowerPoint ahead to a slide bearing all four reports. “As you can see, all of these victims sustained severe blunt force trauma from some kind of metallic club or baton—specifically a _club_ or a _baton_ —that seemed to go beyond what should be necessary. And remember Dr. Rowe’s testimony: injuries from such weapons are rare, yet all four of these injuries occurred within the last three years, the time when Daredevil has been taking the law into his own hands. These are the basic facts that set these victims apart. Then one of these victims, gripped by terror, said three words: _Daredevil did it_. This tells us what it looks like when Daredevil hurts people. It looks like blunt force trauma from a club or baton within the past three years that seems to go above and beyond what is necessary.” He advanced the PowerPoint to another slide with the elements of assault—now with a check mark next to one line saying “the defendant caused,” and another check mark next to the line “serious physical injury.”

Tower smiled grimly. “We still have to talk about intent, but that’s not hard. You heard from the defendant that he sees the people he attacks as criminals. Unfortunately, the defendant isn’t a judge or a jury. He’s not qualified to make that assessment. And yet he took the stand just a few days ago and admitted to us all that the only way he can stop the people he attacks from going back out on the streets is with physical force. He knows what he’s doing and he’s _choosing_ to do it, and since we’ve proven that he has no valid claim of self-defense or defense of others, all we have left is the fact that the defendant, time after time—” Tower flung out his arm, clicking the little clicker as dramatically as it could be clicked, “— _intends_ to cause serious harm to his victims.”

A final check mark appeared.

“The evidence also shows that the defendant is guilty of strangulation.” He moved to a slide with three reports, where part of the reports were highlighted. “As you can see, three of these victims suffered from strangulation. For the reasons I just said, we know the defendant is responsible, and we know he acted intentionally.” Check marks appeared next to all of the elements of strangulation, easy as anything.

Tower slid his free hand into his pocket while the other advanced to yet another slide. “That leaves us with only two crimes left. Crimes that don’t affect most of us directly, but affect justice and security throughout all of Hell’s Kitchen. Those crimes, members of the jury, are two felonies: menacing of police officers, and assault against police officers.”

 “As to menacing, the evidence has shown that the defendant intentionally and knowingly placed or attempted to place police officers in reasonable fear of physical injury by displaying a deadly weapon where the officer was in the course of performing his duties. You heard Detective Sergeant Mahoney admit, here in this courtroom, that Daredevil repeatedly threatened not only him but seven other officers as well, all while bearing a weapon. And the defendant never disputed this.”

A scattering of check marks appeared.

“Finally, as to assault, the evidence has shown that the defendant caused serious physical injury to police officers with the intent to prevent them from performing a lawful duty. Now, the defendant tried to insist that he only used physical force against corrupt cops, but that’s just not true. After all, there’s no evidence to show that Detective Sergeant Mahoney was corrupt, and yet Detective Sergeant Mahoney _admitted_ that the defendant _attacked_ him. That, right there, means the defendant is guilty of assault against a police officer.”

This time, Tower used the clicker slowly, letting each check mark appear one by one while the jury watched. Then he let out a slow breath and for a moment, Foggy was hopeful that he was about to finish. But no, Tower wasn’t done. “Let’s talk more about Daredevil’s relationship with the NYPD,” he said. “No one denies that the defendant and the NYPD worked together to take down Wilson Fisk as well as the Punisher, Hell’s Kitchen’s other prominent vigilante. We’re all appreciative of that partnership in those cases. But now it’s gone too far.”

He walked deliberately closer to the jury box. “Members of the jury, you saw from the Detective Sergeant’s testimony that he is firmly on Daredevil’s side. I have the utmost respect for the man who brought in the vigilante Frank Castle, but it’s very simple: the Detective Sergeant’s attitude in this courtroom reflected the attitude of the entire NYPD: an attitude of indulgence. The NYPD just isn’t interested in holding Daredevil accountable. Who, then, is able and willing to actually apply the law to the defendant? At this point, members of the jury, the answer is: just you.” He paused, and sighed, and almost sounded disappointed, like he’d really rather not say this but had no other choice. “And that is why justice—for Hell’s Kitchen and for all of us—requires that you find the defendant guilty. Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I didn't outline closing arguments before writing the examinations, which is a rookie mistake, so I probably need to go back through and make sure everything matches up. In the meantime, I hope all of this made sense. 
> 
> Shoutout to Heisey for helping me figure out the procedural stuff for adding Foggy as counsel. Admittedly, I kind of just name-dropped the form and moved on, but still, thank you!
> 
> Oh and just so you know, where I live, the jury would normally have their own cute little screens for powerpoints and stuff, but I haven't seen that on Daredevil, so I'm having Tower wheel in his screen instead as a compromise.


	46. Legends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Legends" by The Afters (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pfi8PyyOXgg).

Matt

Murmurs filled the courtroom when Tower finished speaking. Jury members and spectators alike whispered to each other, but it all blurred together. Matt was too focused on Foggy’s pounding heart to catch a word of what they were saying.

Marci’s style for closing was sharp, cutting through the other side’s case as though with a scalpel. Matt’s own style tended to be more dramatic, tapping into ethos wherever he could and spinning it together with the evidence. Foggy? Foggy was at his best when he was telling a story as if to his friends or family, which was why he usually leaned towards opening statements. But he wanted to do this, he really did, and Matt couldn’t help thinking that maybe what Daredevil needed in a defense wasn’t a scalpel or drama anyway.

Then Lauria asked if the defense was ready and Foggy made no answer, gave no sign of even having heard her.

Marci nudged him. Foggy looked up. A chair creaked behind them as one of the spectators shifted awkwardly.

“Well?” Lauria asked icily.

Foggy jumped and hurried to stand up. “Yes, Your Honor. Sorry. Permission to enter the well?”

“I think it should be clear you don’t have to ask that.”

“Thank you,” he said anyway, with that light note of artificial confidence Matt recognized so well. Matt tried to focus on the confidence and ignore the artificiality as Foggy moved slowly into the center of the courtroom. His breaths were shallow, too shallow.

“You can do this,” Matt whispered, but Foggy wasn’t him; Foggy couldn’t hear.

The entire courtroom waited in tense silence.

Foggy set his shoulders back, took a relatively deep breath, and began. “Members of the jury, my name is Foggy Nelson. I’m Matt’s law partner at Nelson and Murdock, and I would’ve been by his side throughout this trial except…” He turned slightly, presumably showing the buzzed portion of his hair. “I’m living proof of just how urgent the danger can be here in Hell’s Kitchen. If Matt hadn’t been with me, I wouldn’t be standing here talking to you. I’d be dead.”

He let those words hang there. Then he started walking, a few steps to the left or right as he made his points, with the casual yet decisive air of a professor launching into a lecture on his favorite subject. “You heard a story a few minutes ago about a young man out alone at night in Hell’s Kitchen. They’re lots of ways that story can go. Let me talk about two that are the most relevant today. First let’s imagine that this young man is, as the state suggested, a member of a minority group. He’s used to people writing him off at best, or at worst, actively oppressing him. And tonight is no exception. Some other people see him and decide it’s their place to disapprove of him. They make their feelings known with their fists. And who’s around to stop them but Daredevil?”

“Or, let’s imagine that the young man really was attacked by Daredevil. In the prosecution's version in that story, the young man was attacked by Daredevil because of hatred or prejudice. And if Daredevil were _only_ a mask, maybe that would make some kind of sense. But Daredevil is a person.”

If someone had told him, back when Foggy first discovered that Matt was the one under the mask, that Foggy would ever say something like this, Matt would’ve laughed (and tried not to cry).

“A person named Matthew Murdock,” Foggy went on, “born and raised right here in Hell’s Kitchen. He was both orphaned and blinded at a young age, meaning that for most of his life, Mr. Murdock has been the _subject_ of prejudice and discrimination. But he’s dedicated his life to helping everyone facing oppression however he can. By day, he does it as a lawyer, defending people from every kind of injustice imaginable. At night, he does it as a different kind of hero. If that young man really was attacked by Daredevil, it’s _only_ because he first made someone else cry out for help.”

Foggy took a breath to continue, then stopped. Froze.

Matt learned forward, zeroing in on Foggy’s heartbeat and breathing, both of which were speeding up even faster than before with nerves as he forgot where he was going next. It was a short pause, maybe short enough that the jury thought it was intentional, but Matt knew better, and—

“Counsel?” Lauria asked, thereby drawing absolutely everyone’s attention to the fact that the pause was not intentional at all.

Foggy cleared his throat. “Yes, Your Honor.” The words sounded automatic, cued by nothing more than the environment. “Um…one second.”

Then Matt heard him take a deep breath and hold it, and slowly let it out, falling into the rhythm he’d used when meditating in Matt’s sun-filled apartment. “Okay,” he said under his breath, to himself, too quietly for anyone else to hear. “I’m okay.”

Foggy stood up straighter. “If you see something, say something. But…sometimes, saying something isn’t enough.” His voice became more determined now as he remembered where he was going. “It’s not enough when you’re facing down a guy who wants nothing more than to rob you…or stab you…or rape you…or kill you.” He slowly shook his head. “These are ugly scenarios, but they’re the realities we’re dealing with here in Hell’s Kitchen. They’re the realities our police officers and our legal system try to fight every day. But sometimes we need help _now_. Sometimes none of that is enough.”

 _Sometimes the law isn’t enough,_ Matt had said, and now Foggy’s heartbeat rang loud and true.

“Which is why the better way to put it, in this case, is: if you hear something, do something. During this trial, the evidence has made clear that Matt Murdock is _not_ guilty of the crimes the prosecution charged him with. The evidence has shown that his actions have been solely in the defense of others because the evidence has shown necessity, imminence, and proportionality.”

Matt heard the subtle _click_ of Foggy advancing his own presentation. Foggy and Karen had argued about font, color, size, and everything else Matt couldn’t see. By default, Matt had sided with Karen—her sense of style seemed more, well, _generally accessible_ than Foggy with his pension for weird ties—and Foggy had complained good-naturedly. Matt couldn’t hear any jury members scooting forward in their seats, so he assumed the text was at least sufficiently visible.

“Now, members of the jury, the prosecution needs you to believe that Daredevil doesn’t only act when necessary, but we know that’s not true. Hell’s Kitchen is…well, it’s home. But it’s also kind of a mess. You heard Melvin Potter, a man who was coerced into working for Wilson Fisk, talk about how effective Fisk is at manipulation. You’ve heard from Fisk himself, who knows Daredevil will stop him even when the police or the FBI can’t. Or won’t.”

Foggy raised his voice. “But Fisk isn’t only bad guy out there! And the NYPD can’t be everywhere all the time. Karen Page, Claire Temple, Ella Vallier, and even Melvin Potter all took the stand to explain the threats and dangers they faced. We’re talking, in some cases, about literal knives to throats, or to the throats of their loved ones. These witnesses, called by both the prosecution  _and_ the defense, are all people—like many of us—who are alive and uninjured today only because there was a time, or maybe two or three, when they screamed for help…and Daredevil heard them.” Foggy shrugged. “Maybe if the NYPD could hear screams from five blocks away, Daredevil really would be unnecessary. But unless the police get lucky, they can’t even _start_ trying to rescue people in danger until someone uses a phone. And as you heard from Detective Mahoney, it can take seven to eleven minutes for the police to even show up. This, members of the jury, demonstrates two truths of the defense of others: imminence and necessity. When Daredevil hears the screams, it’s because someone is in _imminent_ danger. A gun to the head, a knife to the throat. When Daredevil runs to the scene, it’s because his presence is _necessary_ —there’s just no time to wait for the police.”

Foggy stopped and breathed in slowly. Matt curled his fingers into fists under the table. This was it, this was the part where he talked about proportionality, and he hadn’t had the chance to talk with Foggy about what he thought about what Matt did to Felix Manning, not really, and what if Foggy was just as freaked out as Karen had been?

Foggy was always great at playing devil’s advocate, true. But this arguably hit a little closer to home.

“Of course,” Foggy said, lowering his voice slightly but losing none of his calm and confident tone, “Daredevil’s actions must still be proportional. And we all have a sense for what this means. A kid on the playground knows it’s not fair to punch another kid in the face because someone cut in line for the water fountain. But if you’re in a dark alley facing two men with baseball bats, it’s not enough to slap them on the wrist and ask them to cut it out. Right now, the prosecution needs you to believe that Matt Murdock’s actions were disproportionate to the threats faced by the people he was trying to protect. During this trial, for instance, the prosecution tried to show that he took things too far in preventing Felix Manning from threatening and coercing innocent people. But Felix Manning has refused to give a statement, leaving us with only these facts: Wilson Fisk had repeatedly used Felix Manning to manipulate honorable people including FBI agents into impossible and dangerous situations, and Felix Manning didn’t stop his machinations just because Fisk was put in prison. Based on those facts, Mr. Murdock had no option but to use physical force to render Manning incapable of fulfilling his threats. This is not disproportionate.”

It was disproportionate, it really was, but at least Foggy made it sound good.

“And, well…the prosecution also talked about Kyle Conway.”

Under the table, Matt felt Marci rest her hand on his leg. He hadn’t realized he’d started shaking it.

Foggy’s voice hardened. “Again, the facts show that Mr. Murdock’s behavior wasn’t disproportionate. Kyle Conway lost his life because _he_ pulled a knife in the middle of the night, and because _he_ died when his blood didn’t clot the way someone else’s would. Matt Murdock had no reason to expect this, no reason to think that using Kyle Conway’s own weapon to keep him at bay would cause him to bleed out. That single cut with a knife, just enough to get an angry man to back off, wasn’t disproportionate.”

He actually sounded like he believed that.

“Yes,” Foggy swept on, “you also heard from Dr. Rowe, who went into great detail about the amount of force it takes to stop people like Fisk and the other bad guys of Hell’s Kitchen. But remember that these bad guys are _not_ the victims. If Daredevil didn’t step forward, didn’t _do something_ , the only people in the hospital would be the _real_ victims: innocent members of our community who’ve been targeted by criminals. And Dr. Rowe doesn’t even know for certain whether any specific injury was caused by Daredevil at all! All she can offer is speculation. She can’t say whether the bad guy had a gun or a knife, can’t say whether the bad guy had a friend who only got scared off because Daredevil broke his buddy’s femur. That’s both for the protection of the real victim, and for the protection of Daredevil himself. Who is not invulnerable, as Nurse Temple explained. Emphatically. And while Dr. Rowe can’t speak to what actually happens at night, my client can. He told us that he only fights until he reasonably believes that the assailant can no longer fight back—testimony supported by Melvin Potter’s personal experience with being on the other side of Daredevil’s fists. Daredevil doesn’t go too far. His actions are proportionate.”

Contrasting Melvin’s testimony with Rowe’s was a nice touch, Matt thought, except for the fact that Rowe was painfully obviously more credible than the guy whose girlfriend had hired Matt as her lawyer.

Foggy walked closer to the jury box. “So we’ve seen that Daredevil’s actions are necessary and proportional in response to imminent threats. And in all of this, the prosecution has offered only _one instance_ where Daredevil was the first physical aggressor, and that was against Felix Manning, an individual who extended Wilson Fisk’s criminal empire. And by the way, who was responsible for prosecuting Manning?” Foggy pointed across the courtroom. “The prosecution! But they’ve failed to apply justice to people like Manning, people who enable the violence that criminals perpetuate. There’s no one to stop people like Manning _but_ Daredevil. Taken together, all of that means that the physical force Daredevil uses against the violent criminals of this city is _justified_ under the law.”

His heart beat steadily while his words rang through the courtroom.

Foggy caught his breath. “Even if you _don’t_ believe that Matt Murdock is justified in the force he uses, that doesn’t mean the prosecution has met their burden…because Matt Murdock is presumed innocent. That means he stepped into this courtroom _innocent_. The burden to disprove his innocence—” Foggy strode across to Tower’s table, “—rests right over here, with the prosecution. The prosecution bears the burden of proving each element of each charge by beyond a reasonable doubt! Members of the jury, that’s the _highest_ standard of proof in the American court system. And the prosecution has simply failed to meet that burden.”

He retook his place in the center of the well, commanding everyone’s attention. “What, exactly, is reasonable doubt? If you look in your jury instructions, you’ll see an explanation. You’ll see that reasonable doubt can be very subtle. If you just find yourself going back and forth on any of the points the prosecution has to prove, that’s it: you have reasonable doubt. What, exactly, does the prosecution have to prove? Well…” Foggy slipped one hand into his pocket, apparently preparing to settle in. “A lot. The state has to prove a lot. That’s because the state brought four charges, each with separate elements, _all_ of which must be proven by beyond a reasonable doubt. Let’s just…” He clicked the clicker, presumably to a slide displaying the elements of the charges. “Let’s just go through this together.”

 _Click._ Matt wished he could see whatever was on the slide.

“There are two consistent elements that the prosecution just can’t prove. The first goes to Daredevil’s alleged crimes against civilians; the second, to his alleged crimes against the NYPD. The first element is _identity_. See, the prosecution is accusing Daredevil of strangulation and assault against citizens of Hell’s Kitchen. And even _if_ you don’t believe Daredevil was acting in defense of other citizens, that still doesn’t mean he’s guilty because the prosecution has failed to prove that he was actually responsible for causing any particular harm to any particular victim. I mean, you heard DA Tower get up here and talk about what different hospital victims have in common, but what’s he basing that on? A single statement from a man who refused to actually take the stand and testify. That, members of the jury, is _not_ enough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that ‘Daredevil did it.’ Which means the prosecution has failed to prove that Daredevil is guilty of either strangulation _or_ assault.”

A few members of the jury nodded. Matt felt some, but not all, of the tension in his chest unwind.

Foggy was on a roll now, his voice sharpening into something more closely resembling Marci’s. A scalpel. “The second element the prosecution has fallen woefully short of proving is that the NYPD was engaging in _lawful activity_ when its officers encountered Daredevil. See, if you take a look at your jury instructions, you’ll see that menacing and assault require that the officer was performing official or lawful duties at the time of the threats or alleged attacks. And we all know for a fact that many members of the NYPD were corrupt. Fisk manipulated them like he manipulated Melvin Potter. The NYPD was rotten from the inside out, which meant their objectives were too, even if some individual cops weren’t. Even officers like Brett Mahoney found themselves serving a corrupt organism, which is why Daredevil wasn’t committing any crime against them when he stopped them.” Foggy paused. “Maybe you think this is splitting hairs. No, it’s being precise. And the law is precise for a reason: to protect people like Matt Murdock, who are simply trying to stop the NYPD from aiding and abetting people like Wilson Fisk. And that’s why the prosecution has failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Matt Murdock is guilty of menacing or threatening police officers in the course of their _lawful_ duties.”

Foggy let those words settle over the courtroom. He pulled his hand out of his pocket and held it by his side while he straightened up and lifted his chin. “You’ve heard the prosecution’s version of the story, and you’ve heard a technical defense of Daredevil’s actions. But let’s take a moment and just tell Matt Murdock’s story.” His voice softened. “It’s the story of a man who, despite losing both his parents and his sight and having almost every obstacle you could think of thrown at him, decided from a young age that his purpose in life was simply to help people. Every day, he goes to work in a shabby little office, getting paid primarily in fruit and pastries, just so the people who need help the most will be able to find it. And every night, he goes back out again to keep doing the same thing: helping the people who need it most. How many of us have ever been that dedicated to _anything?_ You see…” Here a small smile crept into Foggy’s voice, “in the words of the great Thurgood Marshall, Matt Murdock is a man who chooses, every day _and_ every night, to dissent from indifference, from apathy, and from fear all for the sake of defending other people.”

Matt bit his lip to keep from mirroring Foggy’s smile with one of his own.

“Every night,” Foggy said quietly, “he puts his life on the line, taking the violence that would fall on the rest of us if not for his determination to protect us. Every night, he hears the screams and chooses to do something about it. To _defend_. Nothing more, nothing less. And so, based on all the evidence, you can come to only one verdict: not guilty. Thank you.”

Among the spectators, Ella started clapping before Maeva grabbed her hands and shushed her.

Foggy kept his composure returning to the defense table, but he was shaking by the time he slid into his seat. It was woefully inadequate in terms of thanks, but Matt didn’t want the jury to see the defendant enthusiastically thanking his lawyer before the trial was over, so Matt held his hand out for a fist bump under the table.

“Rebuttal?” Lauria asked.

Tower stood quickly. “Yes, Your Honor. Briefly.”

Too quietly for anyone else to hear, Lauria muttered, “I hope so.” Matt stifled a smirk.

But he couldn’t get a read on Tower as the DA walked back into the well for the last time. Couldn’t tell how confident Tower was. Couldn’t tell if Tower was relieved to have this whole thing behind him, or if Fisk had something else for Tower to do next.

“ _If you hear something,_ ” Tower quoted, “ _do something_. That’s the defense’s justification. They think that as long as the defendant hears something, he’s free to do whatever he wishes. But that’s not how the world works.”

Tower settled into his groove, his voice simultaneously smooth and authoritative. “The defense insists that two elements of the defendant’s charges are still at issue: identity and lawful activity. They’re creative arguments, but they don’t stand up to scrutiny. As to identity, the defense seems to think that circumstantial evidence, no matter how persuasive, is always insufficient to prove a crime. That’s just not true. Circumstantial evidence is like this: there’s a vicious dog living next door, and there’s a hole in the fence. No one complains about the dog because they’re scared of the dog’s angry owner, but the fact remains that an observable pattern emerges: everyone who walks by that yard ends up getting bitten. You don’t need cameras, you don’t need statements, you don’t need any direct evidence in a case like that because the circumstantial evidence is enough. Here, the circumstantial evidence is more than enough. We have similar types of injuries, we have similar weapons used, we have a consistent timeframe, we have Detective Sergeant Brett Mahoney’s admission that crime scenes involving Daredevil usually include people with all sorts of similar physical injuries, and we even have a clear statement from one victim: Daredevil did it. Members of the jury, all of that is enough evidence to prove the defendant’s identity by beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Next to Matt, Foggy was no longer shaking. He was clenching a pen in his grip, breathing angrily through his nose.

“And what about lawful activity? That one’s easy. Detective Sergeant Brett Mahoney admitted that the defendant attacked him _while he was trying to his job_. The detective did _not_ insist that in fact the defendant attacked him while he was carrying out suspicious orders or otherwise enabling criminal activity in Hell’s Kitchen. Let me say it again: he admitted that the defendant attacked him _while he was trying to do his job_. His job is to protect and serve Hell’s Kitchen. His job is the lawful activity we expect of our police officers. Therefore, the defendant is absolutely guilty of assaulting and menacing officers while in the course of their lawful duties.”

Tower paused. Slowed down. Let the anticipation build. “Now, members of the jury, you also heard the defense talk about reasonable doubt. Allow me to reference your jury instructions, which offer clarity: reasonable doubt isn’t any possible doubt you can imagine.” He made a low, scoffing sound. “In the world of superheroes like the Avengers, we know to expect the unexpected. But here in a court of law, we play by different rules. No one is above the law, least of all vigilantes. So when you consider the evidence, don’t ask whether there’s any _possible_ explanation that lets the defendant get away with taking the law into his own hands. Ask whether there’s any _reasonable_ doubt that he has violated the law against the very citizens he swears he’s trying to protect.” He paused again. “And in asking that question, you can only come to the conclusion. The defendant is guilty. Thank you.”

Silence.

Matt exhaled slowly.

Tower returned to his seat.

Lauria started giving the jury final instructions.

Foggy did not relax his grip on the pen.

Marci stood up, excusing herself to confer with Tower over exactly what evidence the jury was allowed to take back for deliberation.

Steeling himself, Matt turned towards Foggy. “You did great.”

Foggy neither agreed with Matt’s praise nor tried to dodge it. He didn’t say anything at all. He just leaned close and wrapped his arms around Matt.

Matt’s throat tightened and he swallowed quickly. “Seriously. Thank you.”

Suddenly, a hand landed on his shoulder and he jumped, pulling back to notice a bailiff standing over them.

The man’s voice was gruff. “Mr. Murdock, you need to leave. I’m sure you understand.”

He understood they didn’t want him listening in on the jurors, yes. Matt forced some imitation of a smile. “Course. I’ll just, uh…” He reached for his cane.

“I’ll come with,” Foggy offered.

Matt cocked his head, listening Ella peppering Micah and Maeva with nervous questions. “I’d rather you do damage control,” he admitted, nodding in her direction.

“Got it,” Foggy said immediately. He put his hand on Matt’s shoulder, warm and heavy, and strode off in Ella’s direction.

In the brief seconds of her distraction, Matt slipped out into the hallway. He didn’t actually want to be alone, though, and tried not to show how thankful he felt when Karen appeared at his side as if by magic, looping her arm through his.

“Wanna get out of here?” she murmured.

They walked out of the courthouse together, neither of them bothering to pretend that he needed her to lead him. What the bailiffs didn’t know, of course, was that even standing on the steps, he could still hear the jury when he focused on their room.

“Matt?” Karen’s voice was hushed and feather-light. “Are you sure we should stay here? I mean…you can’t change anything, now.”

Yes, but if things went…wrong, he wanted as much warning as possible. He’d need all the time he had to say goodbye to everyone and he didn’t want to waste a second of it. “I need to know.”

“Okay,” she said simply, looping her arm through his and pulling out her phone. “I’ll pretend to be having an urgent conversation.”

“With?” he asked absently, focusing his ears on the room where the jury was deliberating. They were still in the politics phase, everyone figuring out who had the strongest opinions and who would try to force everyone else to agree with them.

“Captain America?” she suggested. “In case anyone asks.”

“Sounds good.” The jury had found their groove by now. Instead of reviewing the evidence they’d taken back with them, they started by talking about the witnesses. One of the louder individuals was really hung up on everything Tower said about bias and kept talking about credibility, but the others seemed more concerned with the facts. They started going in circles about what was known and unknown, and quickly got stuck on the issue of identity for the two crimes against civilians.

“C’mon,” one of them said dismissively. “We _all_ know it was Daredevil. Just because they can’t completely prove it—”

“Isn’t that their job, though?” someone else countered. “To completely prove it?”

“You’re seriously saying you have reasonable doubt whether Daredevil did it. I mean  _r_ _easonable_ doubt.”

The second person sighed and didn’t answer.

“So maybe we don’t all agree about what happened to those guys in the hospital,” a new voice said, taking control, “but the police stuff is all pretty obvious, right?”

Karen touched his arm. “Matt?”

“Shh—”

“The detective was pretty clear,” the new voice went on. Others murmured agreement.

There was the sound of pages ruffling. “But it’s only a crime if Murdock interrupted lawful activity.” It was a woman this time. “Just because that detective wasn’t corrupt doesn’t mean he wasn’t engaged in corrupt activity. What if he thought he was just doing his job, but Murdock knew he was accidentally, you know, aiding and abetting all the corruption or something? Like that defense attorney said. Nelson.”

People were quiet while they thought about this.

“That’s reasonable doubt,” the woman insisted.

“That’s speculation,” the first person argued, someone who’d clearly been fully persuaded by Tower. “Besides, the detective said Daredevil attacked other officers too. Are we just gonna _assume_ they were _all_ doing corrupt things? I mean…that’s a pretty convenient excuse.”

“Right,” someone else said slowly. “Would you want anyone else beating up cops whenever they feel like it on the off chance the cops are doing something illegal—even if you _know_ that particular cop is clean? Seems like we just let Daredevil get away with it because…he’s Daredevil. Not ’cause it’s legal.”

The woman tried to protest, but it was clear no one else was listening.

Matt tightened his grip on his cane. Assault of a police officer was a Class C violent felony, and menacing of police officers was a Class D violent felony. It didn’t matter what the jury thought about the other charges—that right there was enough to throw him in jail for a minimum of five and a half ears.

Matt’s chest constricted.

“What’re they saying?” Karen whispered.

“Um,” he managed. It came out with a slight squeak.

Karen’s heart started pounding as she realized what was happening. “Okay. Okay. Um, let’s just get out of here, all right? Matt?”

“Yeah,” he said dizzily, letting her guide him down the steps and far enough away that he could no longer hear the jury deciding his fate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to some_fiction for suggesting that I do this from Matt's POV! I was gonna do Foggy's, but I think this is way better.


	47. No Condemnation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Forgiven and Loved" by Jimmy Needham (which is one of my favorite Matt songs ever) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbObOC1lPeY).
> 
> Beware the cliffhanger.

Fisk

The sun rose on a new day the same as every day since her death, the same as it would every day for the rest of his life. Wilson sat up in his bed and turned to stare at the wall across his cell: off-white, fading to gray, cracked, smudged, chipped.

And thought of her.

While Vanessa still drew breath, Wilson had lived in a prison. But at least he’d chosen the prison. Now he was free, but for what purpose? And what value was there in freedom without relationship?

He would give anything to return to that cage.

Wilson mourned her every morning, sure as the rising sun or the ticking clock, but it changed nothing. Her fire seemed too bright to be so ephemeral, but he had no hope in imagining that her spirit endured, no hope in thinking that she might be watching him, that she might be in any way affected by his faithfulness. Such fairy tales failed him long ago.

But even if mourning her served no other purpose, he would continue to do so if only because indifference to her now felt blasphemous.

However, mourning was not merely passive. Wilson spent undetermined minutes remembering her laugh, her touch, the light of her eyes and the certainty of her every movement. But then he turned his thoughts to other ways of honoring her.

Her murderess was, for the moment, beyond Wilson’s grasp. His limited sources informed him that she was well-protected from physical harm by the Devil, the Punisher, and possibly someone else. Someone ghostlike. The legal system had already failed to reach her. As for the media, the only attack he thought might create a difference died with Felix Manning’s incompetence. (The media was her weapon; Wilson was certain that any attack detached from her brother’s story was something she could twist or evade.) Wilson’s fingers twitched; his hands curled; he itched to throttle her.

But Vanessa would want Wilson to be logical, not emotional. The satisfaction of ruining Karen’s life directly would have been unparalleled, but she was not unlike her husband; indirect attacks seemed for now to have mostly cowed her. The jury was expected to return a verdict against Daredevil any day now. It didn’t feel like punishment enough, not for her. But it was something. Especially when her husband ended up dead because of it.

In the meantime, the best course of action seemed to be to continue moving against both Murdocks. It was a war of attrition at this point, and Wilson couldn’t imagine a conclusion where he lost. After all, he wasn’t the only person in Hell’s Kitchen who wanted everyone who supported Matthew Murdock dead.

Lopez advised him (through emails until he regained the ability to speak after what Murdock did to his jaw) to wait until after the witnesses testified to harm them. Apparently, unavailable witnesses could let more hearsay in. Lopez further advised him to wait until after arguments. If any of the jury members were on the fence, a hit against any of Murdock’s witnesses could garner him more sympathy. And although Wilson was adept at morphing murder into accidents in the public’s eye, Lopez was concerned that conspiracy theorists would connect everything back to Fisk, thereby securing even more sympathy for Murdock.

Once the verdict was released, such concerns would become obsolete.

Perhaps Karen was destined not to die by Wilson’s doing. He’d failed during the Union Allied scandal and he’d failed with Dex. But to live on while everyone around her died because of her…perhaps that would be worse for her.

Perhaps Vanessa would approve. If she could know.

 

Karen

They stopped at their favorite Indian place on the way home. She didn’t try to force Matt to eat anything, but she hoped the aroma would take him back in time to dates with her, all the times they’d gone back to that magical little restaurant once there were no longer secrets between them.

It was hard to tell if it helped.

For now, they were on the bed and he was resting his head in her lap, eyes closed, listening to the little heartbeat like his life depended on it. Since he’d been released from prison, it had become his new favorite position whenever Frank Castle wasn’t around. Not one of hers, though, not with the pressure steadily increasing on her bladder. Still, she put up with it just to see the blissful contentment on his face.

She was greedily drinking in the sight when his eyes snapped open and he jerked to a sitting position with absolutely none of his usual care, whipping around to stare back towards her. “Did you feel that?”

She crossed her legs. “You squishing my bladder?”

He didn’t even apologize. “No, the…the…” Slowly, almost nervously, he reached out to press his hand against her stomach. “ _That_.”

No way. “Are you saying…”

“She’s moving.”

Karen pressed her own hand to her stomach, but she already knew it wouldn’t make a difference. She couldn’t feel anything. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

His eyes were wide. “No, I swear.”

“You’re _kidding_ me right now.” If only he could see her pretending to glare at him. “You get to hear the heartbeat before I do, fine, that makes sense, but do you seriously get to be the first one to _feel_ the kid?”

His mouth opened and closed like a fish. “I…I’m sorry?”

She rolled her eyes. “Not your fault.”

Keeping his hand on her stomach, he shifted to sit across from her, facing her. He didn’t speak, and his breaths were too carefully controlled to be relaxed.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked, already knowing the answer would be no.

Sure enough, he simply shook his head, staring sightlessly somewhere just over her head. A minute or so later, he broke the silence: “I should ask Stone to train tonight.”

Not because he’d be going out but because he was already thinking about how to survive in prison.

Five years, he’d said.

He’d barely survived being in there for five _days_.

He tilted his head down slightly, enough that his eyes landed somewhere around her nose. “You okay?” he asked quietly.

“Let’s…not ask questions when we already know the answer.”

Guilt flashed across his face and she was sure he was about to start apologizing. Her relief when he didn’t felt strangely heavy. Because she owed him more apologies than he owed her and the truth was, neither of them wanted to hear it.

He scooted a little closer, rubbing his thumb in a circular motion over her stomach. “D’you ever…d’you ever talk to her?”

Karen raised her eyebrows at his insistence in knowing the sex. “Sometimes.” No real conversations, not like that first time when she’d talked to the baby in Stone’s apartment. Real conversations sort of highlighted how completely unprepared she felt. But she made comments, once in a while. Frank kept thinking she was talking to him.

Matt seemed to think very hard about that.

She searched his face. “Go ahead. It’s not weird.”

Mouth quirking in a slightly chagrinned expression, he dipped his head down towards the object of his attention. “Hey, um…” He paused. They didn’t have a name. “Hey, kid.” He raised his eyes towards Karen as if checking that he was doing this right; she nodded encouragingly and he focused again on the baby. “It’s me. Your dad.”

She closed her eyes.

“I just wanted to say that I…I’m really excited to meet you. I’m just…not sure when that’ll be, now. Um.”

He was quiet long enough that she opened her eyes to see him biting down hard on his lower lip. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought it might be trembling.

He cleared his throat. “Your mom’s gonna take great care of you, though, all right? And Foggy. Do whatever Foggy says. He might get you to do really stupid things, but…he won’t let you do anything dangerous. _Don’t_ let your mom drag you around interrogating criminals, all right? Promise me that.”

“Hey,” Karen said lightly.

“And, uh…Maggie, your grandma. Please let her take care of you.” Then he started talking faster, urgently. “And—and ask her about your grandpa, all right? In case I can’t—in case I’m not around to tell you.”

Her eyes stung.

“And, listen,” he blurted out, “I love you. I love you so—” His voice cracked and she must’ve blinked or something because all of a sudden he was off the bed, backing up against the wall and clenching his hands at his side.

Swallowing, she got up much more slowly. He let her approach without bolting, let her slip her arms around his waist and rest her chin on his shoulder. He didn’t hold her, but he didn’t push away.

What could she say? She couldn’t promise it would be okay. Turning her head, she kissed along his jaw until she reached his mouth.

Finally, his hands came up, spanning across her upper back, and he returned the kisses. Desperation seeped through his every touch.

Neither of them spoke.

 

Foggy

Once he disengaged from Ella, Foggy went straight to the office, which was weird because there was literally nothing to do at the office. Matt, it seemed, had scrounged up enough common sense sometime after Foggy was shot (weird to think that so matter-of-factly…then again, it wasn’t even the first time Foggy had been shot, so…) to start referring people to other lawyers and petitioning judges to be removed from cases. So Foggy found himself standing in front of the filing cabinet, sorting through old documents and stuff, which was normally something Karen could only get him to do if she used her most creative threats. He was usually the kind of guy who could rest a case and then just…move on. Not freak out over impending verdicts. In fact, he usually made fun of Matt for never being able to really relax until everything was wrapped up.

But it wasn’t exactly shocking that _this_ case was the one that Foggy couldn’t move on from.

And hey, all this junk had to be sorted eventually.

He’d finally settled into some kind of groove when, without any prelude, he heard a voice saying his name behind him. Yelping, he whipped around to stare wide-eyed at Stone, who stood in the doorway to the office. He looked suspiciously normal: a navy-blue jacket that looked almost new, dark pants that looked tactical but were a bit too fitted to be entirely practical. Foggy didn’t wanna know how he got ahold of the clothes. His dark hair was growing out again and a tendril hung down over one hazel eye.

Stone jerked his chin at the stapler sitting on the floor next to Foggy. “You should’ve grabbed that, if you’re scared of an attack.”

“I’m not scared,” Foggy retorted. “And I’m _not_ gonna hit someone with a stapler.”

Stone shrugged. “Suit yourself. I need to talk to you.”

Well, whatever Stone had to say was bound to be indefinitely more interesting than all this paperwork. “I’m listening.”

“It’s about Dex.”

“Where _is_ Dex?” Foggy asked, a bit of nervousness seeping into his tone despite himself.

“Sleeping.”

“At…” Foggy checked his watch. “Six-thirty in the evening?”

Stone shrugged again. “I gave him a sleeping pill.”

Foggy gaped. “You…”

Stone didn’t bother to explain himself further. “I need you to take Dex’s case.”

What.

“I already spoke with Matty,” Stone went on calmly, “and he isn’t interested.”

Stone had Matt all wrong. “It’s not that he’s not interested. It’s that he’s got a thousand other things to worry about right now.”

“Do you?”

Foggy amped up the sarcasm. “Nah, I have absolutely no desire to put any effort into making sure my best friend stays out of jail.”

“The trial’s almost over.”

“And if it goes badly, there’ll be a whole appeals process to worry about.”

“Which might be easier to do that if you don’t have to worry about what Dex might do if he has some kind of breakdown,” Stone said in what he clearly thought was a winning argument.

Foggy narrowed his eyes. “Or I could just turn him over to the police.” He wanted to. He didn’t really know why he shouldn’t.

“So do that, and then represent him.”

Even if Foggy wanted to, he was in no state to try to manage two cases this big at once. But he didn’t want to admit that to Stone. “Yeah, and lose my license for it. The conflicts of interest from trying to represent Matt and Dex—”

“Dex will waive it,” Stone interrupted.

Foggy felt a headache coming on. “What? How do you even know about the waivers?”

“I’ve done my research.”

Giving up on technical problems, Foggy gritted his teeth and cut to the heart of the issue. “You know what he’s done. You know what he’s tried to do. To me, to Karen, to Matt.”

Stone just blinked at him, not giving anything away.

“He’s guilty,” Foggy said.

“He needs help,” Stone said.

And that was just not fair.

“I’ll…I’ll think about it, all right?” Foggy asked, a bit more harshly than he’d intended. It was just that of all the people he expected to guilt-trip him, Matt’s weird, murder-ninja brother was not one of them.

Stone’s head tilted, creepily reminiscent of Matt. Then he nodded, apparently satisfied.

Right. The heartbeat thing.

Thoroughly agitated, Foggy waved his hands like he was shooing away an irritating cat. “I’ll let you know what I decide. You can go now.”

Stone’s lips curved in something almost smile-like. “You could use the stapler.”

“Ugh.” Turning around, Foggy picked up a stack of paper. Maybe presenting his back to Stone wasn’t the best idea, but he really didn’t think Stone would do anything. Sure enough, when Foggy risked a glance over his shoulder, Stone had soundlessly disappeared.

Kneading his forehead, Foggy tried to think. There would be a whole host of issues to consider once Dex was turned in. Starting with getting his therapy tapes back—and, ideally, making sure Dex had access to them. Then he had to start building Dex’s defense. Insanity was a hard one to win. The plus side was that New York’s standard was easier; all Foggy would have to prove was that Dex, because of his mental illness or defect, lacked substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct. Other states required the defense to prove that the defendant literally didn’t _know_ that the criminal behavior was wrong.

And Dex definitely knew his behavior was wrong. Foggy just had to show that he couldn’t quite _appreciate_ it. And if that failed, he could fall back on the diminished capacity defense. It wouldn’t get Dex acquitted even if it worked, but it would mean Dex would be charged with lesser crimes. In either case, Foggy was hopeful that it would result in involuntary civil commitment rather than a prison sentence.

Or the death penalty.

Wow, talk about that déjà vu. First Frank Castle was literally back, and now Foggy was being pressured by a ninja with sympathy for murderers to take on a case with only a slightly lower body count. And…fewer meat hooks.

It was the little things in life.

 

 

Karen

The morning after closing arguments, she woke up to a gorgeous fall day and Matt standing at the foot of the bed holding the most delicious breakfast in bed she could’ve imagined. They spent the next few hours cuddled up together under blankets, talking about memories and nothing important. Foggy and Marci showed up for dinner and Karen couldn’t help laughing to herself at Marci’s attempts to fit into the vibe. Foggy and Marci left after it got dark. Matt didn't go out.

And the jury was still deliberating.

That morning after that, she woke up to find Matt already dressed and wondering if they could please go and collect Frank-the-dog from the Valliers. Which they did. The Valliers fed them breakfast and then Matt and Karen visited a park on the way home. It was during school hours, so there was no one to tell them not to let Frank run every which way over the playground equipment. Matt reported that she hadn’t lost too many of her skills during her time with the Valliers, although he noted that she had to be coaxed to venture down the twisty slide. He was patient, though, and they stayed there for the hour it took for Frank to regain her confidence. They took her home and she immediately fell asleep on silk sheets.

And the jury was still deliberating.

The next day, he offered to go with her to track down a lead for one of her private investigation cases, and they pretended that the most important thing in the world was getting the pictures she needed. He went out again that night, in the mask.

The jury was still deliberating.

 

 

Juror Number Two

She closed her eyes. Everyone kept going in circles. Most of the jurors really _wanted_ Daredevil to be innocent, that much was obvious. But they couldn't get around the facts.

Finally, she couldn't take it anymore. She slammed her hand on the table. “Fine! Maybe he is guilty—so what?”

Everyone else stared at her.

“I mean it,” she hissed. “Who cares if he took it too far with that Felix Manning guy? Who cares if he _technically_ menaced a cop or whatever? Do any of us in this room _actually_ think Hell’s Kitchen is better off without him?”

One guy, whom she'd privately nicknamed Harvard on account of his obsession with every legal detail, opened his mouth.

“Besides you,” she interjected.

“What’re you saying?” someone else asked slowly. “We should just…ignore the law?”

Yes? No? She didn’t know and she couldn’t afford to not sound certain. She dodged the question. “Maybe the law needs to catch up to the real world. But right _now_ , it’s up to us whether he goes to prison or is able to keep on helping people. As a lawyer _and_ a vigilante. Like that little girl said. Do you really wanna be the one to take him away from people like her?”

“Technically,” Harvard began.

“Shut up,” someone else muttered.

She pushed her hair behind her ears. “I just feel like…there’s what the law says, and then there’s what’s _right_.”

“What’s legal isn’t always what’s just,” someone else murmured.

She pointed at them. “Exactly! Just read the news, it’s obvious how bad we need Daredevil. There’s still gangs, and other random criminals, and devil’s hell is still out there, and…”

They all exchanged glances. She couldn’t tell what they were thinking.

“And…okay…look.” She took a deep breath. “I have a sister. She was…she was in trouble, once. You know. At night. And he—Daredevil, he saved her life.”

Harvard looked scandalized. “You’re not supposed to be on the jury if you’re that biased!”

Too bad. She ignored him. “Is there anyone here who doesn’t know what I’m talking about?” she challenged everyone else. “Who hasn’t had someone they love saved by Daredevil? Or even if you haven’t, maybe that’s only because there’s less criminals running around to begin with. Thanks to him.”

Harvard blew out an angsty breath. “Let’s just get this straight.” He shoved the verdict form at her. “Do you or do you not think he’s guilty of the charges the DA brought?”

She met his gaze. “Yes. But I don’t care.”

 

Karen

The next morning, Frank had stolen Matt's spot on the bed when she woke up. She sent him a text: _u ok?_

 _I’m with Peter,_ he texted back.

_is he ok?_

_He was trying to show me this game last night. We didn’t realize how late it was._

_what game?_

_D &D? DnD? DD? He thinks I’m obligated to play it because of the DD-Daredevil thing._

Well, that sounded like Peter. Karen wasn’t too bad at D&D herself. If Matt had fun, and if…things…went well, maybe she could join their campaign. Foggy, too. And maybe Marci would want to play. Karen blinked in surprise at the scene she was building in her head, the number of friends and the sheer domesticity of it. It was everything she’d hoped for when she first moved to New York; it was also something that had immediately seemed like a pipe dream.

 _He wants me to play with his friends,_ Matt went on. _We’re making my character now._

She felt a wave of relief. Making a character meant Matt was at least pretending to harbor hope that he’d actually get to use it. _did u stay the whole night?_

 _Yeah,_ he texted back. _I’m a terrible influence but May hasn’t kicked me out yet._

She pictured him, sitting at a kitchen table with Peter or maybe sprawled on the floor, surrounded by campaign books and papers, and the thought of staying in the apartment with no one around but Frank was suddenly extremely unappealing. _until she does, i’ll be at the church._

A pause. _My church?_

_no i’m looking for something with less candles and drama. Know any good Baptist churches?_

He responded with an unimpressed emoji, which probably served her right for trying to make religion jokes. She fed Frank and decided impulsively to take the dog with her to the church.

The walk was gorgeous. New York could be gross in the winter when the snow turned gray, but New York in the fall was magical. Brisk with bright colors, and enough bite to the wind that it reminded her of autumns in Vermont.

The church itself looked peaceful, framed by fall leaves. There was a row of flowers out front, bravely standing up against the chill seeping through Karen’s jacket. And there weren’t too many people. For all that Karen didn’t want to be alone, she didn’t want to be surrounded by strangers, either. Slipping inside, she recognized Maggie’s voice coming from the kitchen.

Karen found her cracking eggs into a bowl of chocolate batter while Jessica Jones stirred another bowl at a carefully-set pace. Squinting, Karen saw a few streaks of chocolate batter on the wall and guessed that Jessica’s first attempts at whisking had been…too strenuous. “What’re you guys making?”

Jessica’s head snapped around. The second she saw Karen, she set down the bowl (Karen wasn’t sure, but she thought it cracked slightly) and stepped back like she’d been caught dealing drugs or something.

“Cupcakes,” Maggie said, mouth twitching with amusement.

“Can I help?”

“We’d appreciate that. Especially since that bowl seems to have been abandoned.”

Jessica muttered something under her breath that probably wasn’t strictly appropriate for church.

Karen wasn’t complaining. Something soothing to do in a well-lit kitchen, warmed by the oven, with the company of two people who cared deeply about Matt _and_ knew the truth of his identity long before it was made public as a result of her mistakes? It was perfect. Maggie shut the door so Frank could walk around freely, and Karen unclipped the leash. The puppy made a beeline for Jessica, sniffing her intently.

Jessica gave her a half-hearted nudge with her foot, but didn’t try to keep Frank away.

“So,” Maggie said as Karen started stirring Jessica’s abandoned bowl of batter. “How…how’s he holding up?”

“Pretty well, I think, under the circumstances?” Karen pursed her lips. “I don’t know. It’s just a waiting game now, I guess.”

Maggie drifted closer. “And how are _you_ doing?”

The fact that the worry was now directed at _her_ made Karen want to shrink into a ball and let Maggie take care of her, and also run away. “Fine,” Karen said quickly. “Yeah, I’m good.” When Maggie looked disbelieving, Karen turned her attention to Jessica. “How’s it going?”

“They haven’t kicked me out yet,” Jessica said simply.

Karen laughed, taking advantage of the moment to study the other PI. Jessica looked…different. Karen couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but maybe it was that she seemed somehow…rested?

Jessica noticed her staring, of course, and arched an irritated eyebrow. “What?”

Caught, Karen figured there was nothing to lose in studying Jessica more obviously. She frowned when she noticed a line of pink skin, raised on her hand. The scar looked recent. “What happened?”

Jessica immediately stuffed both her hands into her jacket pockets. “Knife.”

Karen winced. “You’re not bulletproof, right?”

“I’m still less vulnerable than Matt,” Jessica said flatly.

It wasn’t a competition. Besides, “You don’t have to be invulnerable to be a hero.”

Something shifted in Jessica’s expression; her face became almost neutral, except for the sarcastic curl to her lips. “You really believe all that hero crap?”

Karen scoffed quietly. “You don’t?”

“I just crack my cases.”

“That’s not what I’ve heard,” she countered. She didn’t want to bring up Midland Circle by name if she could help it, but she could tell by the way Jessica reacted that the other woman knew exactly what was going unsaid.

Jessica sighed, shoving her hands further into her pockets. “Turns out, being a hero is a lot of work. And it doesn’t pay great.”

“Remind me, how much are you getting paid to hang out at this church?”

Jessica rolled her eyes. Karen was surprised it had taken this long. “This is a professional courtesy.”

Karen didn’t believe that for a second. Pausing her stirring, she lowered her voice, glancing at Maggie, who surreptitiously pretended to be completely absorbed in measuring vegetable oil. “I know what happened to Trish.”

Jessica’s eyes flashed. “Who doesn’t?”

“You did the right thing,” Karen insisted.

“No offense, but that really doesn’t mean anything, coming from you.”

Karen flinched back, dropping her gaze to the bowl. “Oh. Okay. I’ll just—”

“I mean…” Jessica hesitated. “You didn’t know her.”

“No, but…” Karen bit her lip. “I think I get where she was coming from.”

At that, she fully expected Jessica to slap her, which would probably knock her unconscious or something and spill chocolate batter everywhere. Jessica’s eyes narrowed into slits. “What?”

Karen set her bowl and spoon aside. “I just mean, she was trying to make a difference, right? Stop bad people.”

“By _murdering_ them.”

“I _know_.”

Jessica’s glare intensified, which Karen wouldn’t have actually thought possible. “It’s different.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. But sometimes it really doesn’t feel like you’ve got any other options except stopping the bad guy. And if she had the abilities to do that…I understand why she would use them.”

By this point, Maggie had stopped with the baking entirely and turned around, openly studying the two of them.

Jessica’s voice tightened. “Trish was out of control.”

“It happens,” Karen said softly.

There was a storm of emotions in Jessica’s eyes, too turbulent for Karen to read. “She changed.”

“Yeah.” Karen wet her lips. “It, um…it changes people. Taking a life.”

Jessica stepped back against a cabinet, arms folded against herself. “Whatever. Who the hell am I to judge?”

When Maggie spoke, her voice was quiet. “You can judge the actions while still having compassion for the person who did them. What Trish did was wrong, yes. And, yes, she hurt people. But that doesn’t mean she’s beyond reach. Beyond grace.”

Karen opened her mouth, but whatever she wanted to say got stuck in her chest somewhere. She cleared her throat, picking up her bowl again. “You’re really into grace, huh?”

Maggie’s sudden, cocky smile looked startlingly like her son. “Well, it’s my middle name.”

Karen smiled back. “You’re kidding.”

“A bit on the nose, isn’t it?”

“I mean, you are a nun,” Jessica pointed out, body language finally relaxing somewhat.

“My parents named me Grace, actually, long before the Church got ahold of me.” The smile became a pronounced smirk. “I guess God knew from the beginning how badly I’d need to be reminded of it.”

“Yeah, you’re a real heathen,” Jessica said, completely straight-faced, and Maggie retaliated by flicking a few drops of batter right at Jessica’s nose. A gleeful light lit Jessica’s eyes as she grabbed the nearest spoon.

Before Karen could join the imminent food fight, her phone started buzzing. “It’s Matt,” she announced. “Gotta take this.” Grabbing her bowl before Jessica could use it for ammunition, she ducked backwards into the hallway just outside the kitchen, pressing the phone to her ear with her other hand. “What’s up? Everything okay?”

“Hey, Karen,” he said, strangled. “I, uh…just got the call from the courthouse. The jury reached a verdict.”


	48. Leave Some Faults Behind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Forget and Not Slow Down" by Relient K (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTlw_ZV2fIU).

Matt

He beat the reporters to the courthouse, although he could hear them clamoring on the steps. Then they started yelling questions—apparently they’d spotted Foggy and Marci. Matt tried to block it out.

But the courtroom wasn’t much better. There wasn’t a single person there whose heart wasn’t beating faster than normal. He couldn’t tell whether anyone was nervous, excited, or angry, but the drumming from every corner of the room was cranking up his own anxiety. He wiped his sweaty hands on his pants and clasped them together under the table where no one would see them shaking.

The doors to the courtroom opened. “Matt!” Foggy’s voice was too loud as he headed straight towards Matt. But Marci caught his arm, slowing him down and keeping him from throwing his arms around Matt’s shoulders as soon as they reached him. Matt couldn’t help appreciating her restraint; the last thing he wanted was an emotional display before they even knew what they were supposed to be emotional about.

Marci slid into her seat next to Matt. “Is Karen coming?” she asked calmly, like she was inquiring about a dinner date.

“I called her, yeah,” Matt said, desperate for the distraction of conversation. “She’s at the church, though I don’t know if she’ll get here in time. She said something about cupcakes, I think, and maybe a food fight, although I may have misheard, although Jessica was there too and you can never really tell with her.” Then he clamped his mouth shut. Nervous chatter was out of character. He could practically feel Tower’s eyes watching him.

Foggy, bless him, understood. “Cupcakes?” he prompted.

“Chocolate,” Matt explained. “For the kids, there’s a birthday party coming up, I think. But—” He cut off at the sound of the bailiff opening the door to the jury room.

“What?” Foggy whispered.

“It’s just…” He forced himself to exhale slowly. “They’re coming.”

The jury took their seats, and Matt wasn’t sure there was anything more frightening than the fact that _their_ hearts were pounding. Why? What could they possibly be afraid of?

At that moment, Karen ducked in, breathless and flushed from the cold and exertion, all but falling into a seat next to Maggie behind the defense table. Matt tipped his head towards her just enough to acknowledge her presence. Fabric rustled as Karen reached to clasp Maggie’s hand.

Finally, Lauria entered the courtroom. Matt went through the motions of rising and sitting along with everyone else and wished, for once, that adrenaline didn’t make time seem to go slower.

Was it too much to ask for this to just be _over?_

Lauria turned to the jury. “Have you been able to reach a verdict?”

The foreperson’s voice cracked slightly under the weight of every eye on her. “We have, Your Honor.”

The documents were passed to Lauria, who took her time shuffling through them to make sure everything had been properly signed. Then, at last, she gave it to the clerk to read aloud.

Matt closed his eyes.

“We the jury,” the clerk said, “find the defendant, Matthew Murdock, not guilty of all counts of assault against civilians.”

Okay. Thank God. And Claire. If she hadn’t been there to point out the gaps in Dr. Rowe’s testimony….

“We the jury find the defendant, Matthew Murdock, not guilty of strangulation.”

That was good, obviously, that was good, but the police-related charges were the ones he was really worried about. He kept his eyes closed. Paper rustled in the clerk’s hand.

“We the jury find the defendant, Matthew Murdock, not guilty of assault against police officers.”

Matt’s eyes snapped open. Marci inhaled in surprise.

“And we the jury find the defendant, Matthew Murdock, not guilty of menacing police officers.”

The courtroom burst into activity, people standing up and talking, some of them laughing. Judge Lauria fought to regain order and give her final comments and instructions. Matt wasn’t listening. Marci had leaned forward against the table, giving off airs like she’d expected this all along, and Foggy was squeezing Matt’s arm under the table, and behind him Karen and Maggie were both saying, “Thank God.”

Matt tilted his head towards the jury box. He’d _heard_ them. They’d been convinced of his guilt, most of them anyway, at the beginning of their deliberation, and every time he ventured within earshot over the next days, their conversations sounded just the same.

But there was nothing preventing a jury from taking the law into their own hands, so to speak. To firmly believe a defendant guilty of the laws as written, and yet render a verdict of not guilty. Historically, they sometimes did it because they thought a situation was unfair. Sometimes they did it because they thought the laws themselves were wrong. Or because they thought the law just wasn’t enough.

Or because, today, the people of Hell’s Kitchen really would rather have Daredevil on the streets, protecting them.

Matt decided, in that moment, that he wouldn’t share what he’d heard from the deliberation room to support his new theory with anyone. Not Foggy or Karen or his mother. If he was right, he wanted to hold onto this, the mercy and grace of Hell’s Kitchen extended in thanks for the sweat, blood, and skin he gave for them night after night. If he was right, he wanted to keep this…as something between just himself and his city.

 

“Okay, between these two,” Karen announced, holding up two bouquets. Concentrating on not sneezing at the stifling scents of the greenhouse, Matt dutifully sniffed first one, then the other.

He nodded at the second. “That one.”

“Peonies and hydrangea,” Karen informed him, not that he actually knew what that meant. “Light pink and green. Good choice.”

Reaching out, he ran his fingers lightly over the blossoms. One type was a swirl of petals, like a rose but more compact. The other was a cluster of smaller buds, almost like tiny suction cups. That was…probably not the most artistic way to describe them, but he couldn’t think of a better referent. More importantly, the scent of these flowers reminded him of something he thought he remembered smelling in Marci’s apartment, and even in her hair during law school. The scent was fresh, not perfume, leading him to assume that she occasionally chose these kinds of flowers for herself.

“Who says you can’t be cutthroat and still like pretty things?” Karen asked, leading him through a maze of flowers towards the cashier.

“Stick, definitely.”

“If he could see you now, his whole worldview would be shattered.” When Matt cocked his head questioningly, she elaborated. “Because you like pretty things, yet you’re still cutthroat when you have to be.”

“I…like pretty things?”

Securing the bouquet in one hand, she looped her other arm through his. “You like me.”

He grinned. “Fair enough.”

“So,” she said, leading him out of the store after they’d purchased Marci’s flowers, “do you remember when we had that party the last time we found out you’re not going to jail?”

Matt raised his eyebrows. “You mean, when you ambushed me into attending my own party?”

“Are you gonna make me trick you into it this time?” she asked bluntly.

He smiled. “I think I’ll come willingly.” Then he lowered his voice. “Although it might be more fun for you to convince me.”

“Hmm.” She trailed a hand up his arm. “Don’t tempt me. I learned some really cool martial arts moves a while back.”

His grin widened. “Not the kind of convincing I meant.”

“You sure?” She swayed towards him until her lips were just a breath away from his, only to laugh and pull back when he tried to close the distance between them. “Let’s go, your party starts in an hour.”

An _hour?_ “You work fast.”

Smugness lit Karen’s tone. “We’ve been kind of planning it for a while. It’s given Ella something to focus on, and something to hope for.”

He was pretty sure Ella wasn’t the only one who’d needed those things, but he kept that to himself.

Karen kept her hand on his arm. “Are you really okay with this, though?” she asked, voice losing its playful edge. “I know it’s sudden, and if you need space to, you know, process things…”

He would need that space eventually, definitely, but it seemed the height of ungrateful to skip out on his own party just to be alone with his thoughts, and besides, he didn’t really mind putting off thinking seriously about…everything. What he’d been through, how narrowly he’d escaped a nightmare, what it would mean now that his identity was exposed. “The party sounds great,” he said firmly.

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

 

They held the party at the Valliers’ house, apparently since it was bigger than anyone’s apartment, and since Maeva and Micah insisted that Ella was too excited over recent events to go to sleep at her normal bedtime anyway. As Matt approached the house, he heard music set at a low volume—barely background noise for anyone else, but the perfect level for him. Nineties top forty. Definitely Foggy’s suggestion.

They found the front door unlocked. (If the party didn’t include two vigilantes and one superpowered PI, Matt would be concerned about that.) The aroma of food grew stronger as warmth flooded out to greet them. Matt inhaled the scents of corn, chicken, tomatoes, peppers, and something chocolate underneath. His stomach growled. So did Karen’s.

“C’mon,” she said, a grin in her voice.

They reached the kitchen and dining room. Maeva and Micah were a flurry of movement, finishing the preparation of dishes and setting things out. Ella, who had been sitting on a stool engaged in earnest conversation with Maggie, jumped off to fling herself at Matt.

“You won!” she shouted. No one told her to quiet down.

“Well,” Matt said, “I had a lot of help.”

Over the next hour, Marci and Foggy arrived, followed by Peter and his aunt (who came bearing some kind of cheese platter). Jessica Jones was last. Matt hadn’t been sure, when he first heard Karen had invited her, that she’d actually agree to come. But she had, and he was pretty sure he had Maggie to thank for that. Karen had asked Claire, too, but she was working late. She would’ve asked Stone, but Dex was a problem. She also admitted that she’d briefly considered inviting Frank Castle, but she’d suspected that might give both Micah and Foggy a conniption.

“This is so cool,” Peter said as soon as he found Matt. “Like, _all_ these people know who you are? I mean, I guess everyone knows who you are now—”

And that was still…disturbing. Matt was trying not to worry about it.

“—but all these people knew _first_. Like…I can’t even imagine that.” He deflated, ever so slightly and just for a second, but then he straightened up again. “Has anyone described the balloons to you? They have Get Out of Jail Free printed on them, with, like, Monopoly money.”

“Karen,” Matt explained. He put his hand on Peter’s shoulder. “C’mon, I want you to meet someone.” And so, while May introduced herself to the Maeva and Micah and conscripted herself into their service, Matt led Peter straight towards where Maggie was…doing something with plastic cups, Matt couldn’t quite tell. “Peter, this is my mom. Mom, this is Peter.”

She didn’t know, technically, who Peter was. It was Peter’s secret to share, and he and Karen had apparently devoted considerable time coming up with a believable backstory for how he knew Matt. So Matt was shocked when Peter stuck out his hand to shake Maggie and said, “Hi, Mrs. Murdock, I’m Spiderman.”

For her part, Maggie accepted this as calmly as a report about the weather. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said warmly. “Don’t let Matt boss you around too much.”

“Hey,” Matt protested mildly.

“And please, feel free to use the church if you ever need a place to crash, literally or figuratively. And if you ever need to talk, I’ve been told I’m not bad at listening.”

“Can you tell me embarrassing stories about when Matt was a kid?” Peter asked hopefully.

Matt shifted his weight. “Uh. Peter…”

“The few that I know,” Maggie said evenly.

Peter seemed to realize he’d triggered some tension, because he backtracked at lightning speed. “And, um, I’m teaching Matt to play D&D. D’you know what that is? I’m gonna run the campaign, he’s playing a tiefling monk—”

“A…what?”

With a deep breath, Peter launched into his explanation. Smiling to himself, Matt leaned against the dining room wall, settling in to listen.

 

Micah

The house had never been so full. For all the years of their marriage, Micah cherished every moment spent with just Maeva. But now Micah kept getting distracted from his job of making sure the nothing burned in the kitchen by the emotion welling up at the realization that…this was his life, now.

Matt’s partner—Foggy, everyone called him Foggy, and Ella lectured Micah for about fifteen minutes the one and only time he accidentally referred to the lawyer by his given name—was leaning against the kitchen counter, talking seriously with Ella while he stole pieces of cheese from the platter Spiderman’s aunt had brought. “I heard all about how you did in court,” Foggy was sharing earnestly. “You were _amazing_.”

She beamed and fluffed at the skirt of her dress (blue as a clear sky). Then she lowered her voice like she was sharing a secret. “It wasn’t actually that scary. The bad guy didn’t even ask me hardly any questions.” She sounded disappointed about that.

Foggy looked amused. “Tower’s not a bad guy, and why do you sound so bummed out about him not questioning you? That means you did such a great job talking with Matt.”

She humphed. “I wanted to say more. I was ready for all his questions.”

She meant she’d wanted to fight longer. Micah felt a pang. She was so like Matt and he couldn’t be more proud of her, but he also hated to think of the hurt she’d find as a result of her bravery.

“Well, you did a great job,” Foggy declared.

“You think?”

“I really do. I wouldn’t lie to you.”

She lowered her voice again. “I wish you could’ve seen their faces, Foggy. The, um, the jury people? I think they liked me. And I think they liked Matt.”

“It’s kinda hard not to.” He shifted to lean closer. “So, I have a question for you, Miss Ella.”

Her eyes lit up. “Yeah?”

“So, you know how Marci and I are gonna get married?”

“Like Matt and Karen?” She let out an excited gasp. “Are you gonna have a baby?”

“Whoa, slow down. There are definitely no plans for a baby. _But_ ,” he added quickly as her face fell, “I wanted to ask you something very important.”

Her head tilted up.

“Do you know what a flower girl is?”

She gasped again; Micah ducked his head to hide his smile.

“Because, you know, Marci and I decided that whoever our flower girl is should be the smartest, kindest, prettiest, awesomest girl we know—”

“That’s not a word, Foggy!”

“Hush, I’m very smart. So then we thought, who’s the smartest, kindest, prettiest, _awesomest_ girl we know?”

She peered up at him. “Me?”

“You. So, whaddya say? Will you be our flower girl?”

 

Stone

Dex seemed, well, _occupied_ , and Stone was starting to feel…restless. He could join Dex in throwing nerf projectiles at targets, but it was hard to find that option appealing when he thought about where he was in town and how close he was to a certain apartment. Apparently, there was a party where most of Matty’s friends had been invited. But Claire had needed to work. Her shift should be finishing right about…now.

And given that it was three in the morning, Stone could only assume that the party was over.

They’d been texting once in a while, updating one another on Matty’s life depending on the knowledge each of them had, but Stone was well aware that asking to meet one-on-one would be new territory. Still, he wanted to tell someone about his conversation with Nelson. And…he wanted to see her.

He made his decision. Shrugging into a jacket, he headed for the door. “Dex, stay here, won’t you?”

Dex cocked his arm back to throw a nerf dart. “Where’re you going?”

“To visit someone.”

Dex looked confused. “You have friends?”

“No.” The denial was instinctual—he wasn’t supposed to have friends, friends were dangerous and infantile.

“Matt?”

“No. Don’t worry about it. But _stay here_.”

Dex let the dart fly. “When will you be back?”

“I don’t know. Don’t break anything I can’t replace.”

Dex threw another dart. “Yeah, yeah.”

Hoping he wouldn’t regret this, Stone stepped outside. In the privacy of the dingy lobby, he typed out a text to Claire, then proceeded to rewrite it three times before it sounded vaguely normal. _Are you at the hospital?_

She responded in less than a minute: _Who’s hurt?_

_No one._

A pause. _What’s up?_

Stone braced himself. _I want to tell you something._

He expected something dismissive, something sarcastic—punishment for his evasiveness. What he got was: _You can come over._

Stone reread the message twice to be sure he wasn’t hallucinating.

 

She opened the door in a cream-colored sleeveless shirt that looked softer than silk, her dark hair tumbling over her shoulders, her large eyes already laughing at him as she stood there with one eyebrow raised.

Beautiful.

He was allowed to think that. He _was_. Beauty wasn’t necessarily weak or soft. The danger came from becoming _attached_ to beauty, but he wasn’t attached. He was merely…appreciative. (Stone was well aware that if Stick would disagree that appreciating beauty was harmless. But…Stick was dead.)

“You can come in,” she prompted.

Belatedly, he realized she’d stepped aside to grant him entrance. He stepped over the threshold, categorizing the scents of her apartment. Dust—she wasn’t often home—and the smell of the hospital clinging to the scrubs she’d dumped in a closet, but also candlesmoke. The candle smelled like banana bread.

She locked the door behind him. “Welcome to my humble abode. You want anything to eat? Drink?”

“No,” he said quickly, before wondering if that was rude.

She seemed unruffled either way as she led him further into the house and plopped down on a couch. “So, what’s up?”

He hated small talk, but the sooner he shared the news, the sooner his excuse to be here at all would be over. He hesitated.

She rolled her eyes. “Sit _down_.”

Fine, but the couch was pushing it. He pulled out a wooden chair from the dining set. “It’s Dex. I can’t keep hiding him away forever.”

“Seems impractical for both of you,” she agreed.

“But he’s a fugitive. He needs to go through the legal system. And he needs help, if such help can be found there. But I understand the case will be…difficult.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “No kidding.”

Stone’s genuine excitement got the better of him. Despite himself, he reached his main point. “I spoke with Nelson, and he said he’ll take Dex’s case. He’ll actually take the case!”

“Wow,” Claire murmured.

“Do you realize what this means? Dex will have…a _chance_ , at least. He might get the psychological help he needs. He might not be kept in a cage. He could get better.”

A smile was spreading across her face. She slipped her hand over her mouth in an attempt to cover it, but it was too late; Stone had seen.

“What?” he demanded.

“Nothing,” she said innocently, but she didn’t bother to hide the smile now, which morphed into a self-satisfied smirk.

He opened his mouth to make a witty retort, but something stole his attention. Footsteps and rapid, shallow breaths coming up the stairs, just a few floors down but moving fast. Four men. At three in the morning, that couldn’t possibly be good.

“What is it?” Claire asked.

He held up a hand. The men had reached her floor and were no longer moving upwards; instead, they slowed their pace to stalk down the hall.

Towards her.

Stone stood up.

“…Emiliano?”

“Shh.” Straining his ears, he caught the clinking of metal. He couldn’t tell exactly what it was, but it seemed foolish to assume it was anything other than a knife.

“Claire,” he hissed. “Where’s your back door?”

“I don’t—I don’t have one.”

What kind of living space had only one door for egress and ingress? And this was the kind of thing he should have noticed immediately upon stepping into her apartment. It was his fault for letting himself be distracted.

All of this was his fault. They couldn’t be Hand, they were too clumsy for that, but Stone must have other enemies. Perhaps someone who’d seen him with Dex or with Matty. Perhaps Wilson Fisk had finally learned the identity of the man who’d hidden Karen from him. Stone gave himself one moment to turn towards Claire, take in her wide eyes as she stared at him, and apologize.

“What—” she started to say.

The door shuddered as one of the men threw his shoulder against it. Stone snatched two knives from under his jacket; Claire slipped behind him at the exact same moment that he stepped in front of her.

The door splintered.

The four men rushed in, stumbling to a halt at the sight of Stone’s blades.

“The hell are you?” one of them spluttered.

Stone leapt forward and lashed out. Two strikes cut deep gashes in the leader’s chest, making both Claire and the victim shriek. The others backed up as blood soaked their companion’s shirt.

“Want more?” Stone asked quietly.

He thought they would leave at that, he really did. They’d clearly not come here expecting substantial resistance. But they fanned out in the tiny apartment, ignoring their companion who’d fallen to his knees as their eyes fixed on Stone’s weapons.

In any other instance, Stone would laugh at their determination. Their arrogance would surely be their downfall. But they’d taken this fight to _Claire’s home_ , and that was unforgivable.

He threw a knife at the foremost intruder, barely remembering not to aim anywhere lethal. The blade stuck in the man’s stomach. Stomach wounds would knock the strongest warrior to the ground; this man was no match for the agony.

A second man made the mistake of shuffling forward, like he thought he could possibly catch Stone off-guard. Stone lunged, drawing another knife and slashing with both weapons, taking vicious pleasure in the crimson tears in the man’s stained shirt. But out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of an arm twisting, a wrist flicking, and someone else’s knife flying. Towards _Claire_.

Stone threw himself unthinkingly at the knife. He tried to bat the weapon from the air, but the angle was wrong. It was his fault, all his fault, as the knife sank into his left arm.

His left hand reflexively dropped the weapon he’d been holding, he hardly noticed through the pain and the effort of tracking the invaders that Claire swooped to pick it up.

Snarling, Stone lunged at the man who’d attacked her, kicking out a knee to knock him to the ground. Dropping his knife, Stone reveled in the feel of his fist in the other man’s face, breaking whatever was breakable with extreme prejudice until his enemy lay limp.

“Stone,” Claire said quietly.

Stone stood up, quickly wiping the blood off on his pants. “You’re not hurt?”

“I’m not, I’m fine, but…” She was still holding one of their knives; the palm of her other hand was pressed to her forehead. “What the hell?”

Stone surveyed the scene. The blood hadn’t gotten onto too much of her apartment. Still. “I’m going to…take them outside.”

“And do _what?_ ”

He forced a nonchalant shrug to hide the way his hands were trembling with both anger and fear. The anger was shocking enough—he couldn’t remember the last time a fight won so easily had incited anger. But the fear? The fear provided its own reason for terror. “I’ll drop them in the alley, tell the police they fought themselves. Don’t worry, Claire.”

She steeled herself. “I’ll help.”

“No.” He didn’t want their blood staining her.

She glared. “I’ll help.”

Then again, arguing was a waste of time.

They didn’t speak as the they picked up the first intruder. She was strong, probably used to dealing with uncooperative bodies. And she certainly wasn’t squeamish, even when the jostling motion caused the unconscious man to groan. They moved as quickly as they could, and Stone’s senses ensured that they avoided her neighbors. By the time Stone called the police, his hands had stopped shaking.

Claire was still silent when they returned to her apartment, but the apologies began pouring from his mouth as soon as he stepped across the wrecked threshold, his guilt over his failure tangling up with his guilt over unleashing so much violence in her presence—not that she seemed distraught over any of it, and he had no idea what to make of that. “Claire, _mi scuzi_ , I’m so sorry. I should never have let them get this close, I didn’t—”

“Just because you have super hearing doesn’t mean you have to constantly be on guard,” she said tiredly, the words sounding well-worn, and all the more so as she went on. “Not every terrible thing that happens in this city is your fault.”

“But this was.”

“Shh. You’re hurt.” She prodded him towards the couch. “And no, it really wasn’t.”

Her hands moved over his arm, practiced and professional, and Stone let his eyes drift closed under gentle touch around his injury. “They must have followed me here. I didn’t sense anything, but…” But he’d been distracted by the anticipation of seeing her.

 _Soft,_ Stick whispered in his ear. _And it’s gonna get you killed._

Claire let out a hiss of disapproval, perhaps at Stone’s words or perhaps at his wound, and went to grab a sterile-smelling bag from the floor.

“Claire.” He shifted slightly when she dropped the bag on the couch and sat on the cushion next to him, close enough that he could _taste_ her pomegranate perfume mingling with the smell of her sweat, with one leg crooked underneath her. “Don’t worry about it.”

She snorted. “Worrying about this kind of thing is _literally_ my job. Now take your shirt off.”

He stared at her.

Plucking some scissors from her kit, she waved them threateningly. “It’s either that or let me cut the sleeve away.”

“Sleeve,” he said without needing to think about it. The thought of laying himself bare like that caused an unsettled feeling in his stomach that he wasn’t sure how to control.

But she seemed unfairly calm. “Sleeve it is,” she said, deftly cutting the fabric away.

“It’s not bad.”

“It’s bleeding.”

“I can take care of it myself.”

“It’s on your arm.” She pressed the cloth harder to against the cut with one hand while the other rooted through the kit for more supplies. “Not exactly a convenient location.”

He smiled wanly. “I’ve been cut in worse places.”

“I’ll bet.” Her voice was dry as she reached for alcohol. “This is gonna hurt.”

He shrugged.

“Right.” She sterilized the wound. “Fighting ninjas, right?”

“Mostly.”

She picked up a needle and suture. “Those men didn’t come here for you, you know.”

Concentrating on not making any sound as the needle dug through his skin, inflamed around the cut, he forced another shrug.

“I, uh, saw them at work. At the hospital? Repeat offenders, usually got the Daredevil treatment.” She leaned closer, breath ghosting over the hairs of his arm. “Matt thought something like this was gonna happen.”

Of course he had. Which meant Matty shouldn’t have allowed her to testify. Then again, he wasn’t sure Matty could stop Claire from doing exactly what she wanted with or without his permission.

“Are you…okay?” he asked haltingly.

She visibly bit the inside of her cheek. “I mean, yes? They didn’t touch me. I’ll get my friend Santino to keep an eye on this place, and I can crash at my mom’s place tonight, and get better locks in case they have more friends.”

How was she so prepared? “Let me come with you.”

She shook her head. “You have to watch over Dex.”

“Claire, you can’t—”

Her eyes flashed, captivating. “Are you really gonna tell me what to do?”

He was still staring into her eyes. “No.”

Her hands stilled and her gaze dropped, eyelashes casting shadows over her skin. “But no, I’m not okay. You’re here, and that helps, but I know how bad the nightmares were last time, so…”

“Last time?” he asked, feeling the anger bubbling anew in his chest, untempered even by the way she said that his presence _helped_. “The Russians?”

“Matt told you?”

He shook his head. “I listened. When you testified.” It occurred to him, belatedly, that he may have violated her privacy. Although…the testimony was public, so did it matter how he came about the information?

Sighing, she resumed stitching his arm. “But yes. The Russians. Not that these guys were half as bad. I just don’t know how they figured out where I live.” Her brow knit together with worry or concentration or both.

“I’ll hunt them down later and find out,” he said darkly. “Or, I could stay here in case anyone else comes.”

“Hang on.” She pulled back. “Torturing people on rooftops is an experience I only need once.”

As if he needed another reminder of how separate their lives were. “Nice to know you’re so eager to kick me out. Besides, I wasn’t planning on using the roof.”

She snorted again, but maybe he was imagining it or maybe it was actually almost playful. “Right. What, then, my pantry?”

“Too small, and I’d hate to get blood on your cereal boxes.”

“I appreciate that.” Reaching for more thread, she worked in silence for a few minutes while his brain jumped from thought to thought too quickly for introspection. “When are you going back to that, by the way?”

“Back to what?”

She kept her attention firmly on her medical work. “Chasing ninjas. Or whatever you do.”

He didn’t answer.

“Emiliano?”

“I don’t…I don’t know.” He clenched his jaw as she tugged a little harder at the thread sliding through his skin. “I’m not entirely sure how much of the Hand is still out there. I was hunting them before I came back here, but I couldn’t find them.”

“And no sign of them since you’ve been here?”

He hadn’t exactly been looking. Still, he shook his head.

“And I guess there’s Dex to think about,” she went on casually.

He frowned. “Once Nelson takes his case, there’s no reason why I should—”

“Yeah, no, I don’t believe that.”

“What?”

“I don’t believe you’ve put this much work into him to walk away as soon as you can dump him off on someone else.”

“It’s not a _dumping_ ,” Stone said indignantly.

She just tied off the thread with a cocky curve to her lips like she’d already won the argument.

“Claire…”

“So, I guess you’re staying here a little longer?” Pulling back, she started packing everything back into the kit, but made no move to leave the couch to return it to its place.

Was she fishing for something, or was that simply what he wanted to believe? “To do what, exactly?”

“That’s for you to figure out.”

He missed her proximity. Ignoring the voice of warning in his head, he leaned closer. “Would you like me to stay?”

To her credit, she held her ground and her heartrate barely increased as she met his gaze the way she always did, with her eyes piercing straight into him. “I want you to want to stay.”

Taken aback by her bluntness, he blinked. “Why?”

She held his gaze a moment longer. Then, so suddenly that he blinked again, she was on her feet and slamming the kit into the closet. “So you can figure out who you are.”

“What does that mean?” he demanded. “I know who I am.”

“You know who you’ve been made to be. By Stick, by the Chaste, whatever.” She shoved the closet doors closed. “That’s not who _you_ are.”

He wanted to ask how she knew.

He wanted to ask why she cared.

He wasn’t sure which question was more terrifying.

“Anyway.” She returned to the couch, sitting close enough that the distance between them seemed maddeningly intrusive. “Anyway, I think you should stay.”

He rested his arm along the back of the couch and dared to lean closer, close enough to see where her mascara had clumped and she’d chewed through her lipstick. Close enough to see the thin black rims of her dark brown irises. “But do you want me to stay?”

And now he could hear her heart pounding, thumping too quickly to mean anything but yes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long note that you totally don't have to read!
> 
> First off: jury nullification! I'm a big believer in the power of juries, so it was exciting to include this in the plot. That being said, I'd be remiss not to mention that jury nullification has also been used to perpetuate prejudices. For instance, an all-white jury convicting a black defendant when he was obviously innocent. Still, when juries use this power for good, I think it's pretty cool.
> 
> Oh, and yeah, I'm totally writing a oneshot where these guys play D&D and Matt is definitely a tiefling monk with a tragic backstory.
> 
> Also, in typical "me" fashion, the chapter count went up just a teeny tiny bit. I'm 99% sure that I've finally figured out where everything fits, but we'll see. (I wonder if I've ever underestimated anything so extremely before?)
> 
> Finally, I want to comment on the fact that two days from today marks the one year anniversary of the Ella series and, guys, it's crazy. This has been utterly unlike anything I've ever experienced before, and so much of that is because of you, dear readers. If not for your engagement, this absolutely would've stopped with the first Ella story. Instead, it's become this giant thing. And not to get too sappy, but through all of this I've learned so much not only about writing but also about life. For me, this story has been a way to process some very real struggles and also share things that I passionately believe in and deeply love, so the fact that all of this has somehow struck a chord with complete strangers around the world is just...it's incredible.
> 
> So thank you. <3


	49. Oh, My Dear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Oh My Dear" by Tenth Avenue North (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrET4KhgV58).
> 
> Do you all like lots of emotional/philosophical conversation and more parallels than a parallelogram? Yes? Perfect.

Matt

Matt and Karen didn’t leave the Valliers’ house until late. He wasn’t even sure how late, and he didn’t really want to know. The night felt a bit dreamlike, probably enhanced by the alcohol Micah had broken out after Ella finally fell asleep. Now, walking home with Karen’s hand in his, it seemed like Hell’s Kitchen itself had shifted into something surreal. It was quieter than usual, especially in this more suburban part of town, and he couldn’t hear any screams or cries of distress at all.

“Successful party?” she asked sleepily. “I’m never forgetting Jessica’s face when Peter asked her how long she’d been a superhero.”

“I wish I could’ve seen it.” But he’d heard her breathing and her heartbeat, and he remembered being surprised to notice that she hadn’t seemed as offended by the question as he would’ve expected, even as she loudly denied that she was anything but a PI.

Karen simply yawned in response. She hadn’t had any alcohol, but it was obvious how much less energy she had these days.

It seemed unfair, how much work she had to do for the baby while he got to live life as normal. He leaned in close. “Want me to carry you?”

She snorted. “All the way home? I’m too fat.”

She sounded teasing, but he hadn’t really thought about any potential insecurities from her added weight until now. He instantly decided to do whatever he could to stave it off. And since his abilities were no longer a secret, he couldn’t think of any reason not to scoop her up into his arms, bridal style.

She laughed against his chest. “All right, point made. You can put me down now.”

“No, this way is much nicer.”

With an exaggerated sigh, she dropped her chin on his shoulder. “I’m going to fall asleep on you,” she warned.

“Excellent.” Truth be told, he probably wasn’t going to be able to carry her all the way home, but before he could figure out how to backtrack, but he was saved from making up an excuse by the sound of a girl’s startled scream surprisingly close by. He whipped his head around in that direction.

Karen tensed. “What is it?”

“Someone’s in trouble.” He concentrated. “Home break-in, maybe.”

Karen instantly slid from his arms. “Go.” Slipping her hand into his jacket pocket, she pulled out the sunglasses he hadn’t bothered to wear for the party. “I’ll keep these safe for you.”

He didn’t have anything to cover his face, but…he no longer needed a mask. “Call a cab, will you?”

“Bossy,” she said with a smile, and gave no indication that she wouldn’t, in fact, call a cab. Good. His trust in the city didn’t quite extend to feeling comfortable with her walking home alone at whatever time it was. “Go be a hero.” She gave him a small push in the wrong direction.

Grinning was probably not the most appropriate reaction given that someone was in trouble, but Matt couldn’t help it. Sprinting through suburban streets, _at street level_ and without a mask, messed with his head in the best way possible.

The girl didn’t scream again, but now he could hear someone else crying.

A kid.

Matt ran faster. Houses flew by until he reached his target, flipping through the same side window left open by the intruder to land silently in a dining room. The girl—older sister, probably—was shielding a little boy in the hallway while the intruder gestured vaguely with his handgun, seeming distinctly annoyed that the home he’d chosen wasn’t empty.

The intruder got no more warning than two gasps from the hallway before Matt had snatched his arm, disarming him and using the butt of the man’s own weapon to knock him boneless to the floor. With three expert flicks of the wrist, he dismantled the gun. “Call nine-one-one,” he ordered, voice rough from leftover adrenaline and years of habit. He hadn’t brought zip ties to the party; he’d have to stay here until the cops arrived, which didn’t exactly sound like fun, unless… “Do you have anything to tie him up with?”

The little boy responded first, wiping away his tears and darting off into another room. Matt kept half his attention on the boy and half on the girl, who stood frozen in the hallway with her heart pounding like a rabbit’s.

He made a concerted effort to soften his voice. “Hey. It’s okay. He’s out, he can’t hurt you.”

Small footsteps thundered down the hallway. The boy was back, bearing a roll of duct tape. Smart kid. He thrust it at Matt. “This work?” he asked, high-pitched with a slight Mexican accent.

“Yeah, perfect.” Ripping off several pieces of duct tape, Matt knelt and tied the man’s limbs together, and slapped another piece over the intruder’s mouth for good measure. He stood back up and wasn’t sure what else to do. “I can…call nine-one-one, or…”

“I’ll do it!” the boy piped up, and he was off running again to grab a cell phone and punch in the numbers.

As the phone rang, the girl finally stepped cautiously forward. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

Matt frowned. “For?”

“Our…our parents are gone, visiting people, and I…they trusted me to watch over him, but…”

“This isn’t your fault,” he said firmly.

She was blinking back tears now. “I left the window open.”

Matt tried to meet her gaze. “You didn’t ask this guy to break in. He made the choice.”

“But…” Her voice wavered.

“Rosa!” the boy interrupted. “The lady wants our address.”

Jenny turned to her brother and kept her voice steady as she recited the address. Then she folded her arms around herself, shivering. She still hadn’t moved from her place in the hallway.

The boy finally hung up. “Police is coming!” he reported proudly. He went to stand next to his sister. “Rosa? We’re okay. Daredevil saved us.” To prove his point, he threw his arms around her and switched to Spanish. “ _Estamos a salvo,_ ” he assured her.

“ _Es mi culpa,_ ” she whispered back.

Matt wasn’t sure what he could say to convince her it wasn’t her fault, but he had an idea of how to comfort her. “ _Puedo quedarme aquí,_ ” he offered tentatively. “ _Hasta llega la policía._ ¿ _Está bien?_ ”

Both kids’ heads snapped in his direction. Then the girl let out a little laugh. “You speak Spanish?”

“Well, I try. So, do you want me to stay with you?”

“Yes!” the boy said, immediately and enthusiastically.

The girl, Rosa, was more hesitant. But slowly he sensed her muscles relaxing as she calmed down. “Thank you. Um. Mr. Murdock.”

Right. That…that was gonna take some getting used to.

Unsure what else to do, he eventually lowered himself to the floor. Daredevil wasn’t normally one for small talk; usually, victims fled the scene before he finished dealing with the perpetrator, and he left as soon as he called the cops. Now he found himself making awkward conversation with two kids, trying to stick to nonintrusive questions because he was, technically, a stranger. The boy seemed to have no similar reservations; the girl was slightly more taciturn. Even though she knew his name.

But by the time he heard police sirens, the girl was fully relaxed, giggling a little at a story her brother was telling. Matt stood up. “Hey, the police are here, all right? They’ll take care of you. Tell them—”

“You’re leaving?” the boy interrupted.

“Yeah, it might get complicated if I stick around.” The police were on his side, for the most part, but the kids needed to be the priority.

“You’re a _hero_ ,” the boy said indignantly.

“No—well—just—” Matt cocked his head, recognizing the voice of Officer Robinson from the precinct.  He wasn’t Brett, but Matt was convinced he’d be gentle with the kids. “Tell Officer Robinson hi for me, all right?”

“Who?” the girl asked.

He flashed her a grin. “You’ll meet him in about five seconds. I’ve gotta go.” Police footsteps were hurrying up the walkway to the front door; Matt backed smoothly towards the window, twisting to slide out into the night air.

“Bye, Mr. Murdock!” the boy shouted. “ _¡Audios!_ ”

With a wave goodbye, Matt made a break for the nearest backyard, steering clear of the warmth of the streetlights. He heard the kids greet Officer Robinson by name, much to Robinson’s obvious surprise.

Matt set off towards home, texting Karen to make sure she’d gotten home okay. No sooner had he returned it to his pocket, however, then his burner vibrated with Stone’s distinct pattern.

Matt held the phone to his ear. “What’s up?”

“I need to talk to you.”

 

Matt was out of breath by the time he reached Fogwell’s gym. Running at street-level was, apparently, not always faster than rooftops, even if it involved less jumping. He was going to have to figure out how to optimize both roof and street travel.

“What happened?” he demanded as soon as he reached Dex and Stone. Dex was practically bristling, pacing back and forth in front of the ring, and Stone smelled faintly of blood.

“Did Claire talk to you?” Stone asked.

 _Claire?_ Matt almost tripped over air. “What?”

“She was attacked,” Dex growled.

“ _What?_ ”

“She’s not hurt,” Stone said swiftly. “There were some men, apparently they’ve run into you before, and then ended up under her care. Her theory is that they weren’t pleased when she testified.”

Matt swore under his breath. This was _exactly_ why he hadn’t wanted her to testify. “What happened to them? Why wasn’t she hurt?”

Stone scratched at the back of his neck. “Well, see…I was there. So I fended them off and…came back here.”

Matt’s eyebrows shot up.

“She’s updating me on her status, and Dex and I are staying here, close enough to keep an eye on things.” He lowered his voice. “I think it’s good for Dex, anyway, to have a mission to—”

“Go back to the part where you were at her apartment,” Matt cut in.

“What about it?”

“What were you doing there?”

Stone shuffled his feet, uncharacteristically awkward. “Telling her that your partner agreed to take Dex’s case,” he said quietly. “When— _if_ —the time comes.”

Dex froze, heartrate ratcheting up.

Matt blinked. “He did?”

Stone shrugged. “He said he would think about it.”

“In what universe is that the same thing as agreeing to represent a—” Matt broke off, figuring it probably wouldn’t be helpful to call Dex a murderer to his face.

Stone paused. “Well, he’s _your_ friend.”

Matt had no idea what he was supposed to get from that, but this wasn’t the time to get sidetracked. “And you thought Claire needed to know…because?”

Stone shrugged again.

Matt leaned in close. “You just _wanted_ her to know.”

“She’s involved in all of this,” Stone said mutinously.

Stifling a smirk, Matt raised his hands in defeat. He wasn’t going to try to pin Stone down to admit his motivations for visiting Claire. And he certainly wasn’t going to complain that Stone had been there to protect her while Matt had been…at a party.

Guilt suddenly swooped low in his stomach. He did his best to dismiss it. He was allowed to go to a party planned by the people who loved him. A near-crisis that occurred while he was at the party was not his fault. He just had to believe that.

 

Stone

Dex kept shifting his weight, agitated. He’d already been upset enough after what happened to Claire. He’d only met Claire once, when she brought him soup, but he’d clearly liked her. He’d offered to hunt down the men who invaded her home when Stone told him what happened. (And Stone, still furious on her behalf, couldn’t help wondering what difference one or two or three more murders would really make. So Stone hadn’t said no. “Wait,” he’d said instead.)

And then Matty showed up at the gym only a few minutes after Stone called him. He must have run through the streets, yet he was wearing neither his mask nor his tinted sunglasses. In fact, he wore a maroon sweater, now damp with sweat, and jeans. _Jeans_. He’d been sprinting through the city in _jeans_.

Absurd.

Now Stone cleared his throat. “Dex and I talked about hunting those men down. Warning them not to try again.”

Matty’s eyes flicked towards Dex. “Warning them, huh?”

“Make sure they can’t do it again,” Dex said coldly.

Matty instantly revved up for a fight. “We’re not killing anyone.”

“No one said anything about killing anyone,” Stone placated. Not that Matty had heard, anyway.

But Matty put that fancy education of his to work and turned on Stone. “Did you say anything _against_ killing people?”

Stone folded his arms across his chest.

Grabbing Stone’s arm, Matty dragged him into the corner of the gym where the punching bags hung from the ceiling. “You can’t let him kill anyone,” Matty hissed.

“Yeah, fine, leave me out of it,” Dex said loudly, snatching up some of Stone’s extra knives. He didn’t throw them, though. “What else is new?”

Stone ignored him. “Who said I was going to?” he asked, affronted, despite having seriously considered doing just that.

“But he wants to, correct?”

Stone didn’t answer, which was answer enough.

Matty pressed his heels against his eyes. “Stone, this is what I’ve been saying. We’re in over our heads with him.”

How would Matty even know? It wasn’t like he’d been around recently. Stone sighed in exasperation.

“I’m serious. You’re pouring yourself into this guy, but he might never—”

“I really can’t do anything right, can I?”

“Come again?”

Stone gritted his teeth. “You didn’t want me to help you, you don’t want me to help Dex—”

Matty gaped at him. “I didn’t want you to try to turn me into a _murderer_ , Stone, that’s not—”

“And now I’m trying to teach Dex not to kill people, and yet you’re still not happy.”

Matty snorted in frustration. “The problem when you were trying to fix me was your _goal_. Now my problem is with your _methods_. And your…investment.”

Stone rolled his eyes to cover the disdain he felt at Matty’s prickly concern. “My heart won’t break just because Dex never settles down to live out the American dream.”

As if to reinforce his point, Dex started throwing knives at the wall.

A persuasive note slipped into Matty’s tone, like he thought he was being exceptionally reasonable. “Think about all the things you could be doing and learning if you didn’t have to take care of him. I thought you were the one who hated babysitting.”

It didn’t matter what Matty thought. Stone wasn’t one to quit simply because the job got hard or because his (only) friend didn’t approve. He sighed again.

Suddenly, Matty’s hand was moving, reaching out. Stone watched as it came to rest on his shoulder. “Can I ask you something?”

“Would it stop you if I said no?”

Matty’s expression turned soft. “What was your brother like?”

The warmth in his voice and something about the question itself made Stone stiffen up. “No, no. I know what you’re thinking.” He could hear his own accent sharpening and tried to flatten it again. “You think all of this is just…me trying to make up for what I let happen to Giovanni.”

Matty had the decency to look uncomfortable at the accusation, but he didn’t deny it.

“Stick to law, not psychology.” Stone gave his head a sharp shake like he could shed the sticky layers of Matty’s sympathy, exceptionally glad that Dex was on the other side of the room and not in possession of enhanced hearing. “You don’t know anything about it.”

“I would if you told me.”

“It’s not that complicated! I’m simply trying to be a good _person_ , isn’t that what you _wanted?_ ”

“I’m just saying, you don’t have to make up for anything.”

Stone scoffed in disbelief. That wasn’t what he was doing. (Was it?) Besides, “When I called you because Dex got overwhelmed by a _grocery store_ , you told him he shouldn’t scramble to outnumber his failures with good deeds. But that’s exactly what you do.”

Matty’s eyebrows scrunched in confusion.

Stone remembered the tunnels after he’d ended Gao’s life, whatever was left of it. He remembered Matt crouching in front of him, a paint-splattered mask covering his eyes. “You talked before about being a disappointment. To Stick. To your God.”

“Oh.” Something unreadable flashed in his eyes. “Yeah, there’s—there’s that. And, yeah, when I think about Stick, it’s—it’s hard not to just focus on measuring up. Being good enough.” His mouth shifted into a wry grin. “Which doesn’t usually work out so well for me.”

“But?”

The grin became a small, shy smile. “But when I think about Karen and Foggy, and my mom, and Ella, and…and so many people now…” He ducked his head, possibly in awareness of the discrepancy between the number of people in his life and the number of people in Stone’s. “I love them. And I want this city to be a safe place for them. So when I do what I do, it’s not just, you know, guilt or fear or any of that.” He tilted his head back towards the front hallway, where Stone knew a poster hung bearing the name Murdock. “And when I think of God as having more in common with my dad than with Stick…same thing.”

Strangely, Stone found himself hoping that it was true. For Matty, at least. Because if anyone needed a reprieve from carrying the weight of mistakes, both things done and things left undone, it was Matty. As for the accusation that Stone had somehow assigned himself a similar burden…well, it was something to think about.

 

Karen

After the party and his impromptu rescue mission, Matt slept almost until noon. When he finally woke up enough to tell her about Claire, Karen felt a stab of guilt. Because it all came back to her, didn’t it? Everything that happened with Matt’s trial was all because of the mistakes she’d made.

But she couldn’t undo that.

What she _could_ do was damage control for the next crisis, whenever it might come. There was a conversation she’d been wanting to have for a while, but the timing was never right. Maybe it still wasn’t right. But she and Matt were gonna be parents. They had to be…proactive.

She decided this conversation would best be held while he was distracted with something else to do. It was a tactic Karen noticed that Sister Maggie often employed to great effect and Karen wasn’t above stealing her mother-in-law’s techniques.

So she waited until the crib arrived.

Matt was sprawled out on the floor in their bedroom when Karen found him feeling his way through the different pieces. Privately, she knew she could have the whole thing put together in about a third of the time it would take him, but she also intuitively understood that successfully putting together a crib was some kind of fatherhood rite of passage. At least, it was to Matt. She wondered briefly if her dad had thought of it that way.

She settled on the edge of the bed, one hand tapping a bit nervously at her stomach. “Hey, Matt?”

“Hmm?” he asked, voice absent but eyebrows pinching together a bit as he picked up on her fidgeting, her heartbeat, and about a hundred other clues, probably. “I was thinking,” he said, before she could go on.

Honestly, she was a bit relieved to delay making her point. “Aww,” she said teasingly. “You know I love when you do that.”

“I was able to know you were pregnant before you got to tell me, and I was able to feel the baby moving before you could, right?” He scratched behind his ear. “So I thought, if you wanted, you could find out the sex first and, you know, go from there. Figure out how to tell me.”

Her heart skipped a beat as she stared at him. “You serious?”

“Of course, if you want.”

“Matt, this…thank you for this.”

“No problem.” He flashed her that grin that said he was proud of himself. “I look forward to however you decide to tell me.”

As he turned back to the pieces, she told herself to stop procrastinating. Sliding off the edge of the bed, she sat on the floor with her legs crossed. “I have to something else to thank you for.”

“Yeah?” he asked, voice absent but eyebrows pinching together a bit as he picked up on her fidgeting, her heartbeat, and about a hundred other clues, probably.

“For, um, dealing with Felix.”

She definitely had his attention now, if the rigidness of his posture was any indication, but he kept his face aimed at the mess of crib pieces on the floor. “You shouldn’t thank me for that.” He picked up a thin piece to twirl it between the fingers of one hand while the other hand hunted for the piece’s mate. “I know you weren’t really comfortable with it.”

“Yeah, but…thank you. Seriously, if those lawyers had gone through with it, or if Felix had…had shared the story on his own…” Just the _thought_ of Kevin’s story being blasted across the media made her feel like she was drowning.

Matt nodded wordlessly. Then he managed to properly connect two pieces, and his expression turned smug. He held it up to show it off. Some kind of corner piece. It’d only taken him, what, five whole minutes?

She braced herself. “But, um, but I was thinking we should probably figure out how we’re gonna handle your, um…”

He cocked his head questioningly.

“Your, you know…torturing thing.” She twisted her ring around her finger. “Because of the baby.” It wasn’t a copout, not really. She _would_ have to figure out how to explain to their kid that Daddy broke someone’s jaw just to get information or something, unless they decided now to take that kind of thing off the table.

Matt frowned down at the crib pieces and didn’t answer.

“Don’t you think God has a problem with you torturing people?” she blurted out.

Wherever he’d been expecting her to go with this, it probably wasn’t that. He looked surprised, but he sat up and took his time gathering his thoughts, wearing the same expression he always wore right before beginning a closing argument. “If it’s the only way to protect people—”

“Is it?”

“I mean…the world’s a messed-up place with, you know, original sin and all that. So sometimes God protects people by taking out the person who’s hurting them. Protection, justice—sometimes that involves violence.”

“But…then why are you always angsting about Daredevil?”

“Because I _enjoy_ it!”

Oh. Right. That part.

Tipping his head back as if to avoid her gaze, he started drumming his fingers on the floor. He opened and closed his mouth once, twice, and then just stayed silent.

She thought harder. They could work through this, she knew they could. But…the only way she could think of to ever get Matt Murdock to stop doing something was by getting him to feel guilt over it. Failing that….

Suddenly, he reached across the jumble of crib pieces to brush his hand over her knee. “How about this,” he began slowly. “I believe that the things I do when I, uh…you know.” He winced slightly. “When I use pain, or—or, yeah, torture, I tell myself that I only go that far when it’s important. But you’re more important. To me.” He took a deep breath. “So I’ll stop. I’ll try to, anyway.”

“Just like that,” she murmured.

“Just like that.” His eyes searched for her face. “I love you.”

 

The conversation helped, it really did. It wasn’t like Matt was known for keeping promises, but the fact that he was willing to try, that they’d be at least mostly on the same page, was something she could hold onto. Something stable she could pin down for the life they were trying to build. Torturing wasn’t good.

(Two things, really. Torturing wasn’t good, and Matt loved her more than he loved torturing people.)

But the whole conversation also must’ve triggered something, because she woke up gasping in the middle of the night from nightmare reliving waking up in the car with—with what was left of—

She reached out for Matt. He was gone.

Her face was sticky with tears and going back to bed would just invite more nightmares, so she groped for one of Matt’s soft hoodies and climbed up to the roof. Before she could talk herself out of it, she was speaking into the night. “Matt? Matt, please come home.”

He landed on the roof less than five minutes later, dressed in black with his mask tied over his face not to protect his identity but because he still didn’t like strangers seeing his eyes. He pulled it off as he crossed the roof to cup her face in his gloved hand. “What’s wrong?”

She opened her mouth to explain, only to see someone else land on the roof behind him. Stone. They’d been out patrolling together? She felt suddenly stupid, especially because Stone didn’t immediately excuse himself.

No, the weird Italian ninja strolled forward. “Tea?” he suggested.

Matt looked at her inquiringly, clearly willing to send Stone away if she preferred. But she wasn’t actually sure what she wanted.

After all, Stone knew what it was like to lose a brother.

“Tea sounds good,” she said hesitantly.

They filed downstairs together, and Frank went crazy barking at Stone until she got used to him, which provided a nice distraction from everything Karen was trying not to think about. Stone volunteered himself to make the tea, which was…sweet. Matt hovered close, keeping a hand on her arm or shoulder, not saying anything but giving her the chance to decide what she needed.

If she didn’t remember Matt’s nightmares, both before and after he suffered from devil’s hell, maybe she’d be more embarrassed to admit, “Bad dream. About…about Kevin.”

“Right,” he said gently.

Tangling her hands together, she clasped them behind her neck. “And I just—I just—” She took a shaky breath. “It’s this huge part of my life, and I can’t think about it without…” She trailed off, not wanting to say _without hating myself_ out loud.

Matt seemed to understand what she’d left unsaid. “It wasn’t your fault. You were…intoxicated, not—”

“The only reason he was _there_ was to help _me_. Because I was too self-absorbed to—” She broke off. “I got myself into a shitty relationship, I turned my back on my brother when he tried to help me, and he _still_ came after me, he _still_ —” She broke off again, swallowing back a sob in her throat. “He was trying to _help_ me,” she said at last, spitting every word like bullets aimed at her own heart. “And I killed him.”

Silence fell.

Stone was the one to break it. He set the tea kettle on the stove and turned to where Karen stood in the middle of the apartment. “What was his name?”

“Stone,” Matt warned tightening both arms around her.

“I told you about Giovanni,” Stone pointed out.

Karen narrowed her eyes. “If you try to tell me you know what it’s like, I’m seriously going to punch you in the throat.”

“I thought I was doing the right thing. I wasn’t worried about him. I simply assumed he’d be fine. He always ended up fine.”

“You didn’t kill him, Stone. You told me. It was drugs, it wasn’t—”

“I wasn’t there,” Stone said simply. “He needed me, and I wasn’t there. He wouldn’t…he wouldn’t have been in danger if I’d been there.”

“You don’t know that,” Karen said tiredly.

“No, I don’t, but do you imagine that means anything to me?”

Wriggling free of Matt’s touch, she took a step back and wrapped her arms around herself.

Stone hesitated. “Karen. There are a thousand things you might wish you’d done differently, but you can’t change any of that now. What you _can_ do is look ahead at what you’ve built of your life since that moment. Protect this life you’ve built, protect it in honor of your brother.”

She couldn’t stifle the disgust welling up in her at the cheap line, even if Stone didn’t mean it like that. After what she’d done? “That’s too easy.”

“It’s not. Running from what you’ve done or losing yourself to the guilt— _that’s_ easy. Trust me.” He paused. “Or trust your husband.”

Grimacing slightly, Matt stared towards the floor. “He’s right.”

She shook her head. “Matt, I told you. This is something I can’t atone for.”

To her surprise, he didn’t disagree. “Maybe you can’t,” he said carefully. “But that’s the point of forgiveness.”

“How can he forgive me if he’s _dead?_ ”

“Karen—”

“It’s not fair,” she snapped. “I can’t just close my eyes and tell myself it’s okay, like—”

“Forgiveness isn’t saying something’s okay,” Matt said quietly. “Forgiveness is…”

“It’s what, Matt? How does it _work?_ ”

He wet his lips. He looked like he wished Foggy were here for this. And maybe Foggy would have better words to say, but Foggy never made mistakes quite like the ones Karen had made. “When someone does something wrong,” Matt said at last, “it causes hurt. And that hurt doesn’t just go away. Someone…someone has to feel it So forgiveness is…taking on the hurt, so the other person doesn’t have to carry it.”

She closed her eyes, all too familiar with that.

“Like when I hurt Foggy.” Matt shoved his hands into his pockets. He didn’t specify a particular instance; he didn’t need to. “Sometimes he turned that hurt back on me, which was what I deserved, but most of the time he just shouldered all the hurt on his own. Forgiveness.”

“How does that help when Kevin…he can’t shoulder anything. He’s _gone_.”

Matt nodded tightly. “So you have to forgive yourself.”

“What does that even _mean_ , Matt? _How_ do I do that?”

He opened his mouth, but he didn’t say anything.

What, did he not have an answer? “ _How?_ ” she pressed. “He was trying to help me, and I killed him. I can’t say it wasn’t my fault, because it _was_. I can’t say it’s okay for whatever bullshit reason because it’s _not_.”

“Maybe that’s true,” he said quietly.

She felt cold. “What?”

He looked so desperately afraid of saying the wrong thing, but it was too late now. “Maybe…maybe it was your fault, Karen. I don’t know, I wasn’t there. And I don’t really think you’ll believe me if I try to convince you it wasn’t. So…all right, let’s say it was your fault.”

She flinched, even though a small part of her managed to find relief in someone else’s acknowledgement of her guilt.

“You messed up,” he said gently. “But aren’t you and Foggy always telling me that the things I do, the mistakes I make…they don’t change me? My…my value?”

“I _know_ I have value,” she said flatly. “Doesn’t mean I don’t still…”

“Hate yourself?” Stone offered, pouring tea into mugs.

“Stone,” Matt warned. “Don’t—”

“ _Yes_ ,” Karen breathed. “Every time I remember.”

Heartache filled Matt’s eyes. He wet his lips and she braced herself, but instead of arguing he just said, “It feels good, doesn’t it?”

She stared at him.

He shrugged uncomfortably. “Because it feels like…it would somehow be unfair if you _didn’t_ hate yourself, right?”

She managed a small nod.

“But you can’t forgive yourself if you keep forcing yourself to relive all the pain.”

That part almost helped, but then he kept going.

“And it doesn’t do any good. You’re not helping anyone by torturing yourself over this.”

That didn’t help, that didn’t help at all. She was always doing things based off what would do the most good, but that didn’t mean shit compared to the fact that the woman she saw in the mirror was a woman who’d killed her baby brother because she was too stupid and selfish too—

“Hey.” Matt had moved towards her, hands on her arms, just shy of crowding her. “Karen, sweetheart, you’ve gotta let go.”

Just another trite line. She shook her head. “I can’t pretend it’s okay.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying you have to give yourself permission to stop trying to fix it and just call it what it was, to let it be bad, be _terrible_.” His eyes were _so close_ to meeting hers. “Yeah? The world’s not perfect, and neither are you. But you don’t have to be.”

Her eyes blurred with tears because that—oh, that _hurt._

He didn’t understand. Ever since the cancer, it had all been on her. Keeping the family together, keeping the business together. Keeping Matt and Foggy together. And when she did make mistakes, people ended up dead. And now they were having a kid, and she’d almost gotten Matt thrown in jail and killed and—

Matt’s fingertips gently caught her chin, lifting her head when she tried to lower it. “Don’t believe me?”

It was stupid. No one was perfect; she knew that. But she shook her head anyway, biting down hard on her trembling lower lip. A tear rolled down her cheek. Her chest was so tight with the effort of stifling a sob that her words were barely a strained whisper: “I’m sorry—”

“What for?” Matt asked sadly.

“You’re—you’re right. I don’t—I don’t have to be p-perfect, but—Matt—I don’t _believe_ that.”

At her confession, he pulled her closer. She stumbled into his embrace, falling against his solid frame with the baby between them and burying her face in his shoulder.

“Listen,” he murmured, voice low in her ear; she felt his words rumble in his throat before she ever heard them. “You don’t have to believe that right now. But while you figure it out, I’ll be here. I promise.” He pressed a searing kiss to her tearstained cheek. “I love you. I love you so much.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just have a lot of feelings about the different ways that Matt and Karen relate to guilt, even though we don't get to explore Karen's perspective as much, and I don't think I did it justice but in this essay I will....


	50. I Won't Give My Word You Won't Get Hurt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Trainwreck" by A Rotterdam November (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHWhiKooM0s).

Karen

They stayed up late drinking tea until Stone left, but Matt didn’t go out again. Karen felt a new layer of guilt settling on her skin for monopolizing Daredevil when other people needed his help. She sniffed, trying to pull herself together. “You should go back out there.”

“No.” He steered her to the couch where Frank had flopped down once she realized no one was intending on playing with her.

“Matt, the people out there need you.”

“Not to be egotistical,” he said quietly, “but I kinda feel like you need me right now.”

She sniffed again. Frank licked her arm. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just…stupid pregnancy hormones.”

Matt’s eyes flickered over her like he was studying her. “Admittedly I’m not an expert, but…is it?”

Well…she could probably blame the nightmare on the pregnancy, and the emotional crash after the turmoil of the trial. But the fears, the guilt, the pressure—none of it was exactly new.

Sitting beside her, he started running the back of his hand over her cheekbone, back and forth. “Can you tell me what’s worrying you the most?”

She closed her eyes at his touch, trying to ignore the post-crying headache she could feel building in her temples. “I don’t know. Nothing specific. It’s just a feeling.”

He was quiet for a moment, processing or considering this. Then he asked, “How _long_ have you had this feeling?”

“It’s not like it’s constant.”

He just cocked his head, clearly not satisfied with her answer.

Sighing, she slid down the couch and nestled closer. “I wasn’t gonna go to college.”

What ever he was expecting her to say, it was apparently not that. “What?”

She sorted through the words in her head, convincing herself it would actually be worthwhile to say them out loud. “After…after we lost my mom. My dad kept trying to make the diner work, but he had no idea what he was doing, so I tried to…he wouldn’t really listen to me, but I followed behind and fixed whatever I could. And I knew if I left, the whole place would fall apart. I wouldn’t even apply anywhere.” She wet her lips. “Kevin did that part for me.”

Matt’s arm slipped around her.

“It’s okay, it’s just…”

“You shouldn’t have to fix everyone else’s problems,” he said quietly.

“I know, but it’s just the way it works, sometimes.”

His hand around her shoulder started fiddling with her hair. “I think I have something to apologize for, then.”

She shook her head instinctively. “No, Matt, it’s not your fault.”

To her relief, he didn’t argue—even though she doubted she’d convinced him. “I have something to thank you for, then. The number of times you’ve helped Foggy and me…mostly me, actually…”

“I don’t mind.” It wasn’t like she hadn’t known, especially the second time they started dating, that any relationship with Matt would be complicated.

“But you’ll let me know, won’t you? If I’m…putting too much on you. Or if you just need a break.”

They probably should’ve had this conversation sooner. When, exactly, she wasn’t so sure. Before she was falling apart over it, at least. For all that she kept trying to get him to trust her enough to share what he was feeling, maybe she should take her own advice. “I’m sorry, I should’ve said something, or—”

“And _I_ ,” he swept on, “will do a better job checking in with you. All right?”

It struck her that he wasn’t explicitly apologizing for anything. Just making a promise. In fact, it sort of seemed like he was carefully avoiding apologizing for anything, which she appreciated. They last thing they needed was to go around in circles over which one of them felt guiltier.

Matt tilted his head at her. “You’re pretty incredible, you know that? After having to work so hard to keep the diner running, no one would blame you if you wanted to focus more on yourself once you were living on your own. But you’ve done nothing but look for ways to help people, no matter how dangerous.”

“That’s not normally something you’re excited about,” she pointed out wryly.

“It terrifies me,” he agreed bluntly. “But…” He leaned close, resting his forehead against her temple while the hand in her hair moved to stroke her neck, the warmth of his hand erasing the tension there. “I’m so proud of you.”

She couldn’t hear heartbeats, but everything about him was screaming the truth of the words. And yeah, she let him down when she shot Vanessa. And he’d let her down with the secret-keeping that, possibly, would never entirely stop. But where she’d messed up, he’d thrown himself into the chaos to protect her, and wherever he messed up, she did whatever she could to make things right.

Just like he and Foggy would’ve done from the beginning, if she’d told them about Wesley. Just like Matt would’ve done if she’d called him before going to Vanessa’s gallery with a gun. They weren’t like her dad. They were her friends, and Matt was her partner through and through.

Closing her eyes, she leaned her head on his shoulder just as she felt a tiny flutter or twitching in her stomach.

She snapped upright.

“What’s wrong?” Matt demanded.

She shook her head and slipped her hand under her pajama shirt. “I think…”

She couldn’t feel it anymore, the movement. But it had been unmistakable. She stared at her stomach, willing herself to see the whole picture. There was a little one inside there, someone who would grow into a little person with a whole future of good and bad and terrible and wonderful decisions ahead of them. She looked at Matt, saw the steadfastness in his eyes as he listened.

She found his other hand and squeezed it. “I think we’re gonna be okay.”

 

Matt

It was strange; he couldn’t quite stop himself from waiting for something else to go wrong. That wasn’t actually unusual. What was unusual, objectively, was that he didn’t feel that instinctual urge to put distance between himself and the people he cared about just to keep them safe. (Was it instinctual, though?) If anything, the urge was the opposite.

Nothing had gone wrong yet. But when Matt went out at night, he heard the anger. He was used to hearing the name “Daredevil” thrown around by criminals, both those currently involved in illegal activity and those biding their time.

Hearing “Matt Murdock” was a little different.

Despite what happened at Claire’s apartment, he didn’t hear her name on the streets, nor Marci’s. Sometimes he heard Melvin’s, but when Matt checked in with him Melvin insisted he could handle himself, and Matt didn’t doubt him. More unnerving was hearing Karen’s name—in the past, criminals might refer to her as “that reporter” after she’d exposed them for something, and he’d always made time to convince them to reconsider doing anything about it, but now they knew her _name_.

And occasionally, he heard Foggy’s name.

Which was why he began considering asking whether Foggy wanted to learn some self-defense. But it probably wasn’t worth it. Foggy wouldn’t learn enough in one or two sessions to make that much of a difference, and it would require Foggy to get up close and personal with a side of Matt that…well. So Matt figured a better approach would be to just…hang around Foggy’s apartment, and rely on other friends (Jessica, Peter, and even Frank Castle had a begrudging respect for the lawyer that tried so hard to keep him out of jail) to protect him when Matt couldn’t.

That was the plan, anyway.

So Matt was a bit thrown off when Foggy called him up to say, “So when are you gonna teach me how to fight?”

“…What?” Matt managed.

“I mean, the doctor cleared me for light physical activity, which I realize probably doesn’t mean much to you, and you’re not going to jail, and everyone else in my life _including a seven-year-old_ knows how to fight better than I do, so…when are you gonna teach me?”

Matt was too busy trying to read into Foggy’s tone to figure out if he was being held hostage and this was some sort of emergency signal to answer.

Foggy huffed in annoyance. “I mean, I could ask Peter, but I feel like he’d forget that I don’t have webs or, you know, stickiness. Or I could ask Jessica Jones, but I think she’d hit me too hard and not even feel bad about it. And Stone’s just creepy and I think he’d silently laugh at me the whole time, so…I’m out of other options, buddy.”

No, because if he was really that determined, he could take class. Marci could afford it.

“Matt?” Foggy asked.

Matt jolted back to the conversation. “Yeah, no, right. Uh. Yeah, that’s—we can do that.”

Foggy was probably silently judging him for that less-than-eloquent response, but he simply said, “My schedule’s clear tomorrow evening.”

 

Foggy

He’d honestly considered going for a run or something just to try to get in better shape before training with Matt, until Marci pointed out that he couldn’t increase his fitness after only one run and he’d just end up making himself sore. She was smart like that.

So now he was stepping into Fogwell’s Gym with the awareness that the last really physical thing he’d done was take the stairs in Marci’s apartment instead of the elevator.

Matt was already going to town on the punching bags, which Foggy thought was kind of rude and intimidating, but he stopped as soon as Foggy stepped into the room. He wiped the sweat off his forehead as he caught the bag to keep it from swinging. “You’re nervous,” Matt observed quietly.

Foggy scowled. “That’s the kind of thing that you’re supposed to notice and keep to yourself.” Although now he couldn’t help wondering if maybe Matt had been going so hard on the bags because Foggy wasn’t the only person in the room who was nervous.

“We don’t have to do this,” Matt reminded him.

“Just because I’m nervous doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do this.”

“Seems like a fair reason to me.”

Foggy dropped his bag on the floor. He wasn’t sure what all in there was actually gonna be useful. Except for the water bottle. And the bottle of Advil. “Well, what do they say about courage? You can’t be courageous unless you’re afraid first? Well, let me be courageous.”

Matt smiled darkly. “You don’t have to be afraid of me.”

Whoops. “Not what I meant, buddy. I’m nervous, not scared. Big difference. So, okay, I guess that means I’m less courageous and more just...plucky?”

“Plucky?”

“I don’t know, what’s a lighter version of courageous? The point is, I’m here, I’m wearing gyms shorts, and I have one of those post-workout protein shakes waiting for me in my fridge. We’re doing this.”

Matt let out a short, startled laugh. “Gym shorts? Really?”

“What, so your supersenses can spy on my heartbeat but can’t tell I’m wearing gym shorts?”

“I wasn’t paying attention to what you’re wearing.”

Right. But he _was_ paying attention to Foggy’s heartbeat. As if this whole thing wasn’t awkward enough. Foggy cleared his throat. “Okay, so…how do we do this?”

Matt nodded his head toward the punching bags. “I figured I could show you proper form here, and give you a sense of how much strength you already have. If we have time, we can also work on combos or speed.”

Foggy stared at the nearest bag. “Full offense, Murdock, but I was under the impression that you’d be teaching me self-defense.”

“This is self-defense, Foggy.”

“No, that’s a punching bag. From what I’ve heard about Karen and Spiderman and a freaking seven-year-old, self-defense with you involves getting in the ring and kung-fuing it up.”

Matt looked like…like a confused puppy that had never been allowed on the couch now faced with an invitation to jump on the bed. “You…really want that?”

And yeah, when he made that face, there was _no way_ Foggy could back out. “ _Yes,_ ” he said adamantly.

“…Okay.” Matt backed effortlessly across the room, stopping just short of the ring, and reaching back without looking to hold up the ropes for Foggy. “C’mon?”

Foggy followed and immediately realized that being in the ring with Matt was…disconcerting. _Matt_ in the ring was disconcerting. It was indeed very similar to what Matt looked like stepping into the well of a courtroom…but not to give an opening statement or a closing argument. In those instances, he was persuasive. Passionate, but persuasive. No, _this_ was like Matt going up to give a cross examination: confident and vicious. The problem was, Matt and Foggy were always on always on the same side in the courtroom. And even when they were on opposing sides back at law school, at least they’d always been fairly matched.

Now? Not so much.

Matt’s eyes narrowed.

Foggy glared at him. “If you say one word about my heartbeat right now, I will kill you.”

“What heartbeat?” he asked innocently. “Are you ready?”

“Definitely. Super ready.”

“Okay. First thing is to think about your breathing. You want to keep control of your breathing at all times because you won’t be able to fight effectively if you’re out of breath, and breathing with each strike will make the hit stronger. So I want you to focus on taking deep breaths.”

“Stop obsessing on my heartbeat,” Foggy snapped.

His eyes widened. “No, I’m serious. Watch.” He threw a punch at the air and…yep, that looked impressive. “Now see the difference.” He threw another punch, this time exhaling sharply as his arm extended.

“There’s a difference?” Foggy asked blankly.

“Exhaling like that will usually make you think about using the rest of your body, not just your arm. Specifically your abs. You want to rotate into the punch, and you want to use all of your abdominal muscles at the moment the punch lands. Focusing on breathing with the strikes will help you remember to do that.”

Foggy was absolutely unconvinced that this breathing lesson was disconnected from Matt’s concerns about his heartrate, but he was willing to play along. “That’ll probably make more sense once I try it for real.”

“You’re right.” Matt moved at lightning speed and Foggy flinched involuntarily as Matt dashed past him, slipping out of the ring to grab two things from an open locker and returning in about three seconds. “Micah found these for me the other day.” He positioned two things that looked like foam-stuffed targets (black, with red concentric circles) onto his hands and held them up. “So you can practice hitting these pads instead of me.”

“When you say Micah found these,” Foggy said suspiciously, “you’re saying that Micah found these for when you were training Ella.”

“Uh…yeah?”

“Did you use these with Karen? Or Spiderman?”

“…No.”

Foggy relieved him of the targets and tossed them out of the ring. “I didn’t ask Daredevil to train me because I wanted to be treated like a seven-year-old.”

He half-smiled. “In her defense, she’s a very tenacious seven-year-old.”

“Look, I’m not Spiderman, and I’m confident enough in my masculinity to admit freely that I’m probably more breakable than Karen, too. But I trust you.”

Matt blinked.

“And I know I’ve sent you a lot of mixed messages on this, but in this ring, I don’t want you to treat me like I’m made of glass.”

Matt’s mouth formed a tiny _o_ as the words sank in. Then, setting his shoulders back, he gave a small nod. “Okay. Let’s spar. First step, put your hands up by your chin.” He darted forward to pull Foggy’s hands outwards away from his body, moving so fast it was almost dizzying. “Not that close. Your hands up are your first line of defense, so if you keep it right by your face, you’re giving yourself less time to respond. And keep your elbows in—that’s guarding your chest.” He tapped his foot against the inside of Foggy’s back foot. “Broader stance—there you go. All your balance and most of your strength comes from your stance, so make sure you maintain it no matter how much we’re moving around.”

It felt a bit weird, being manhandled like this, but Foggy tried to cooperate.

Apparently satisfied, Matt dropped back to position himself in front of Foggy in a mirrored stance. “So a lot of street fights aren’t this formal, but it’s better for practice if you get used to fighting this way first.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“So you want to punch me, right?”

“Yes?” Foggy said, hoping that was the right answer.

“Good. Your right hand is your dominant hand, so I have you with your left foot forward. That means you can use your dominant hand to throw your cross punch, which is more powerful because you rotate your entire body into it.” He demonstrated with his own right hand, turning his back foot to launch his fist forward.

“But you’re left-handed,” Foggy pointed out.

Matt grinned the way he always did when Foggy remembered some specific detail about him like it was some amazing thing. True, Foggy only saw Matt use a pen when he occasionally had to sign something by hand, but being a best friend required a certain level of observance. “Yeah, but most people are right-handed, so your opponent is more likely to be right-handed. We can switch it up more later.”

“So I just…punch you?”

He nodded happily. “Jab with your left hand, straight to my chin. Follow it up with a harder cross. The solar plexus. It’s right where the ribs meet, and there’s a lot of nerves clustered there, so a good strike will leave your opponent in a lot of pain and basically unable to breathe.”

“Oh, splendid.”

Matt’s smile faded slightly. “Just think about someone hurting Ella.”

“Is that what you do? To psyche up for this kind of thing?”

“I find people who _are_ hurting people like Ella.”

Duh. Foggy wanted to kick himself for the tactless question, but Matt hadn’t taught him kicks yet.

“Come get familiar with the targets,” Matt said, taking Foggy’s left hand, closing his hands into a fist, and touching the knuckles lightly to his own chin. “That’s the jab.”

It was a strangely intimate position. “Did you do this with Karen?”

“Uh, no. I basically tackled her from behind to see how she’d react.”

Wow.

Matt showed him where the cross was supposed to land, and then stood still with his hands at his side while Foggy started punching—gently, just kind of tapping against Matt’s chin and shirt. Once in a while, Matt would pause the exercise to correct something about the angle of Foggy’s arm or the position of his feet, but for the most part, he let Foggy drill the moves over and over without interruption.

“This isn’t too bad,” Foggy commented.

A gleam appeared in Matt’s eyes. “It’s boring though, right?”

“It’s not _riveting_ ,” Foggy stammered.

“Because we’re just standing still. I’m gonna start moving, but you still need to hit me in the same places.” With that, Matt took two quick steps forward.

Foggy jumped backwards. “If you get in close like that I’ll hit you too hard.”

“Uh, no. You won’t.”

Did he not understand physics? Or maybe he was overestimating Foggy’s ability to control his own strikes. “If you move in close, you’ll move straight into my hand,” Foggy explained, in case he really didn’t get it.

“I’ll be fine,” he said dismissively.

Maybe he was just assuming Foggy couldn’t hit that hard no matter what. Foggy instantly resolved to start working out independent of these sessions.

Thus began the next five minutes of Matt dancing forwards, backwards, and sideways while Foggy scrambled to keep hitting him without losing his form. Most of the punches to the solar plexus ended up hitting elsewhere on his chest. At least the chin was harder to miss that badly, since pretty much anywhere along the jaw was a solid target.

Until Foggy hit Matt’s mouth, splitting his lip so that blood dropped onto the mat between them.

Foggy abandoned his stance to put his hands on either side of Matt’s face. “I _told_ you!”

Matt ducked away. “It’s fine. Barely felt it.”

So ridiculous. “You’re bleeding on the mat.”

“I’ll clean it before we leave.”

“Matt.”

“Matt, me, or mat the mat?”

“You think you’re so funny,” Foggy grumbled.

“C’mon, Fogs, don’t get distracted. This next part’s more fun.”

“Why, because I get to bleed now?”

He grinned wickedly, widening the red gash in his lower lip, and raised his fists. “Maybe if you’re not fast enough.”

 

Stone

“Where do you keep going?” Dex asked.

They were back in Stone’s apartment—they could only loiter so long in the gym before someone noticed, and besides, Matty had politely informed Stone that he and Dex needed to vacate the area _or else_ (or else what, Stone would love to know)—and Dex hadn’t stopped cleaning since they’d gotten back. He’d even _dusted_ , and now was hard at work scrubbing the baseboards.

It was slightly unnerving and Stone couldn’t tell if Dex was trying to send a passive-aggressive message about Stone’s cleanliness, so he focused on sorting his knives. He didn’t need to, really; there was no looming threat or imminent danger. With so much of his time concentrated on Dex, he wasn’t out on the streets. He didn’t quite know enough about Hell’s Kitchen to know whether crime had risen in the wake of Mat’s trial, didn’t know enough to know whether Stone’s presence would make a difference. Either way, Stone was bored. As was Dex.

“I’ve been trying to set things in motion for you,” Stone answered at last. “You can’t live like this forever.”

Dex paused in his scrubbing. “What things?”

Stone didn’t want to give false hope—Nelson hadn’t even agreed to represent him yet. Nor did Stone want to frighten Dex by alluding to legal proceedings. “Don’t worry about it. Nothing is certain yet.”

Dex dropped the sponge into the soapy water, splashing the wall and his own knees. “What things?”

Stone sighed. “It’s a process with many moving parts. It’s not—”

“What things?”

“Would you just trust me?”

The suspicion in Dex’s eyes was one degree shy of fear. “Stone…” But he didn’t protest further.

Stone made a quick decision. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“A mission.” That would help, wouldn’t it? Giving Dex something to focus on, an objective to obtain. Moreover, it would align the two of them towards a common purpose, much like when they had worked together when Melvin Potter held Matty’s mother hostage.

(And there was, perhaps, a tiny part of Stone that wanted to prove to Matty that he wasn't wasting his time here in New York.)

Dex brightened at the suggestion. “What’s the mission?”

“Do you know what the Hand is?”

He stood up, arms folded across his chest. “Fighters,” he reported. “They fought an organization called…the Chaste?” He raised his eyebrows, asking if he’d gotten it right.

Yes, and he’d learned all this from none other than Gao. Reminding himself to tread carefully, Stone nodded. “That’s correct. Do you remember the purpose of the Hand?”

“Life,” Dex murmured. “Something about life.”

“Their mantra is that they serve life itself. But it would be far more precise to say that they serve their own lives—at the expense of all others.”

Dex shook his head.  “No, no, Madam Gao was against Fisk. She wanted to stop him. That’s what she had me do.”

“That doesn’t make her a good person,” Stone shot back. “She kidnapped citizens and used their blood for incubation, with no regard for their safety.”

Dex flinched. “Gao? No, she—she helped me.”

“Again, that doesn’t make her a good person. She murdered people—”

“So have I,” Dex whispered.

“She took pride in it.”

“Stone, can we…” He shook his head feebly. “Can we just do a different mission?”

Stone approached him cautiously, until only the bucket of water was between them. “You need to learn how to stand against people, even people who’ve helped you before.”

“Against? What do you mean, against?”

“Dex. Take a deep breath.”

“You’re saying—you’re saying—what, fighting the Hand is your mission?” Dex’s breathing turned shaky; he backed up, hit the wall behind him. “Fighting her was your mission?”

Stone shouldn’t have said anything, shouldn’t have opened that door, but it was far too late to slam it shut now. “I fight forces of evil, and I’m inviting you to—”

“She was killed,” Dex said suddenly, holding completely still but for his heaving chest. “Someone killed her. I thought—I thought it might’ve been Daredevil, but I had him in my scope at the church, I shot him, so I thought…I thought…”

“She was evil, Dex,” Stone said slowly.

“You—you—” Dex held the back of his wrist against his mouth, muffling his panicked words. “Her head was cut off.”

It was the only way to ensure that she wouldn’t come back. Stone quickly scanned the area. No weapons in Dex’s reach, not that he could see. “Dex, calm down. We can talk about this. Let me—”

“It was you!” With that, Dex lunged forward, upending the bucket. Stone sidestepped, grabbed Dex’s wrist and twisted, but Dex threw himself out of the lock with a yelp of pain, stumbling straight for the door. Stone managed two steps towards him before Dex snatched up two of Stone’s knives, twisted, and threw them one after the other. Dex was fast and uniquely accurate; Stone tried to dodge, but the first knife stuck in right shoulder, the second just above the hip. The knife to the shoulder, Stone could probably work with, but his next step in pursuit sent searing agony up and down his leg. He stumbled and fell to his left knee as Dex raced out of the apartment.

Stone supposed he should count himself grateful that Dex hadn’t actually tried to kill him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this instead of a giant assignment. Whoops.


	51. Like a Dream Coming to Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Moments Like This" by The Afters (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIC-5fZjKMk).

Tower

Losing a trial should not be a relief. Especially not for the District Attorney. But Blake Tower couldn’t lie to himself. And sometimes, when he was drunk, he found himself wondering if this job was cursed.

Blake dug the heels of his palms against his temples. He could live with the stress, of course. He could live with the pressure of overseeing the office, or making the tough calls, of trying to prove his cases under the highest standard of proof in U.S. law. He could even live with the constant questions from the press, and when everyone else in his office buzzed like angry wasps because something was misreported, Blake just shrugged it off. It was part of the job, after all. And if he couldn’t deal with all that _now_ , what hope did he have of making it as governor?

No, the thing that was eating at him was the anxious feeling in his gut that welled up every time he thought about Wilson Fisk. He wasn’t even sure what he was so anxious about. That people—the media, his rivals—would find out that whenever Fisk spoke, Blake listened?

Or maybe he was just living in dread of the moment that his own conscience caught up to him.

He was reaching for his coffee mug when the sudden knock on the door made him jolt in his chair, almost knocking over the mug. “What is it?” he called.

One of his prosecutors stuck her head in. “There’s a Mr. and Mrs. Murdock here to see you, sir.”

Oh. Of course.

If he said no, would they actually leave? If it were any other unwelcome guest else, probably. But Matt Murdock was a lawyer who violated his ethical obligations day after day in accordance with his own code, and Karen Murdock once pulled a gun on Vanessa Fisk. So it really seemed like the best option was to start this—whatever it was—off on a less blatantly adversarial note.

“Send them in,” Blake said resignedly.

The prosecutor ducked back out, and Blake just had enough time to tighten the knot of his tie before Matt and Karen Murdock were stepping into his office. He was wearing a sharp suit that Blake suspected was the highest-quality thing in his wardrobe, and her long, dark red coat gave her the silhouette of a queen about to order the decapitation of an insubordinate.

“We understand you’re still in contact with Wilson Fisk,” she announced before Blake could say anything at all.

His gut squirmed uncomfortably. They weren’t wrong. He said nothing.

“What does he have on you?” Murdock asked softly. “Tell me. I can help.”

“It’s not about what he has on _me_ ,” Blake said indignantly. “He doesn’t—he doesn’t have _anything_ on me, it’s not like that.”

“Then what’s it like?” Karen demanded.

Blake ran his hand down his tie, fighting the urge to loosen it. “It’s the influence he still has over the criminals in this city. Or the influence he has over the people who have influence over the criminals of this city, or…it’s a web he’s built, and we haven’t torn it down yet. Not completely, anyway.”

Murdock tilted his head slightly. “So as long as you play along, he…what, redirects the crime? Or slows it down?”

Blake wet his lips. “Both.”

“Fisk doesn’t have that much influence!” Karen exclaimed. “Not anymore!”

Blake shrugged weakly. It was true that his office didn’t know the exact extent of Fisk’s influence, but he couldn’t take chances here. Not with another election coming up in about a year and a half.

Karen narrowed her eyes. “Let me just get this straight. You’re gonna aim the DA’s office at whatever targets Fisk picks—or aim the office _away_ , if that’s what Fisk wants—in exchange for him using whatever measly power he’s got left?”

“That’s not what’s happening,” Blake argued.

“Sure it’s not,” she said scathingly.

“Mr. Tower,” Murdock cut in, “if you think we can’t find enough evidence to prove that you’ve been cherry-picking cases according to Fisk’s whims, you don’t know us. And when the Bar finds out—”

“The Bar won’t care what you have to say after you’re suspended for practicing vigilantism,” Tower said dismissively.

To his dismay, Murdock smiled pleasantly. “Really? That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

Karen’s smile was decidedly more vicious. “It’s almost as if the New York Bar doesn’t want to make the same mistake you did by trying to take Matt’s services away from the people of Hell’s Kitchen. And if you’re worried about your electorate's opinion of the safety of this city,” Karen swept on, “you should look at the data. Crime’s gone back down since Matt was acquitted. You _owe_ him.”

Blake folded his arms across his chest.

She lowered her voice. “Which is to say nothing of the trouble that could come to your office if the Bar found out about all your underhanded deals during the Punisher case—”

“Karen,” Murdock murmured.

“— _or_ the fact that two prosecutors from your office threatened me outside the presence of my lawyer with information obtained from the Fixer.”

Blake glared. “Oh, so now blackmail’s suddenly a problem for you?”

“I’m just saying, it’s probably in the best interest of everyone in this room if the Bar stays as far away from us as possible. And I’m sure you can help facilitate that, Mr. Tower.”

Fuming silently, Blake set his hands on his hips. “To review, you want me to…cut off any alleged interactions with Wilson Fisk, _and_ refrain from making any complaints to the Bar, _and_ , what, try to stop the Bar from going after you, if it comes to it? Anything else?”

Murdock shook his head. “That’d be perfect, Tower, thank you,” he said, as if they’d just settled on which bar to meet at after work.

“One more thing,” Karen said.

Oh, great.

“I want you to prosecute Felix Manning to the fullest extent of the law.”

“Mrs. Murdock,” Blake said patiently. “Mr. Manning already went through our system. He took a deal, much like you did. There’s nothing more to—”

“He faced three charges,” Karen spat. “ _Three_ , all of which were low-level conspiracy charges. You didn’t touch his history of bribery and blackmail and you didn’t touch the fact that he facilitated _murders_ at Fisk’s hand.”

Removing his glasses, Blake rubbed at the ridge of his nose. “If I prosecute Manning for you, how is that any different from my office allegedly prosecuting people for Fisk?” He turned towards Murdock. “You can’t be okay with this.”

His red lenses glinted harshly. “Just do your job, Mr. Tower.”

Blake put his own glasses back on. “It’ll take time to put a case against Manning together. We have the pieces, but it’s not airtight.”

“Take your time,” Karen offered sweetly.

“I’m just saying, don’t run to the Bar with your complaints just because proceedings don’t start next week, or next month, or—”

“Take your time,” Murdock echoed. “You’ll need it; it’ll be a hard case.”

“Who knows?” Karen said. “It might make your career.”

Blake chewed on the inside his cheek. They were right: successfully prosecuting the Fixer would be the feather in his cap. But it would also put him squarely in Fisk’s crosshairs. Was the governorship even worth that?

Murdock extended his hand—unerringly. “Mr. Tower, do we have a deal?”

There was still a way this could work, if Blake played his cards right. A way for him appease both the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen and Karen Murdock (he honestly wasn’t sure which was the greater threat) while directing Fisk’s inevitable wrath elsewhere. A simple shift in personal goals was all that was required, and Blake had been toying with such a shift for a while now.

He grasped Murdock’s hand. “My office will meet all of your demands.”

 

 

Karen

“Did he mean it?” she whispered as soon as they were safely outside the DA’s office. Not the best place for a defense attorney who was also a criminal, and a private investigator who also was also a criminal.

“His heartbeat didn’t waver,” Matt reported. He smirked. “Well, he was definitely nervous. His pulse jumped every time you spoke. But I don’t think he was lying.”

“Well, in that case…” She raised her hand. “Well done, Mr. Murdock.”

He cocked his head at her. “Are you…are you asking for a high five right now?”

She looked up at her hand. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

He was clearly fighting back a grin, trying to look severe. “You think a high five is appropriate right now. After what we just did.”

“How else are two people supposed to celebrate successfully blackmailing the—”

“ _Shh_.” Grabbing her arm, he started hustling her away from the office.

She tried to stifle her laughter. “Okay, but seriously. What do we tell Foggy? He’s gonna wanna know how this was resolved…and he’s not gonna approve.”

Matt pursed his lips. “I have a ridiculous idea.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Let’s hear it.”

“I warn you, it’s very out of character for both of us.”

She smiled. “Oh, no.”

“I think…” He took a deep breath and grimaced. “I think we should tell him the truth.”

“ _Wow_ ,” she said. “That’s bold. And… _very_ out of character.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially (there were two cops walking towards the DA’s office just ahead of them). “I will remind you, Mr. Murdock, that the Bad Decision Spectrum says nothing about telling the truth about blackm—”

“ _Shh_.” He tugged her down a side street.

She reached out to straighten his tie, slowing him to a stop. “You know, I’m proud of us. Both for telling Foggy the truth—”

“Yeah…”

“—and for successfully bl—”

“Karen, _please_.”

“Okay, okay.” She looped her arm through his as they started walking again. “So…how set are you on telling Foggy immediately?”

“Why, is there something else you wanna do first?”

“Something, yeah.” Leaning in, she kissed his cheek. “Quick detour. You won’t regret it.”

 

When Matt first said he was meeting Foggy at Fogwell’s, she’d realized it was the perfect time to go to the hospital. He’d be on the other side of town, way too far away to realize what she was up to, and she’d have time to get home and scrub the hospital smells off her body.

Of course, she’d spent longer at the hospital than she meant, hugging the ultrasound to her chest and determinedly waiting out the initial rush of panic that _she couldn’t do this_ , reminding herself that it really wasn’t just her anymore. She and Matt together (and Foggy and Marci, and Maggie, and even the Valliers if they wanted to help) could definitely do this.

But it had all worked out perfectly. She still got home in time to shower before Matt got back from training, and he was so distracted in his rush to tell her everything about it that she almost wondered if the shower was unnecessary. He’d gone on and on about how quick Foggy was at picking up the moves, how smart Foggy was at keeping all the instructions in his head, how brave Foggy was to even attempt this after his injury, how determined Foggy was to push himself….

It was adorable.

And it meant that all she had to do was figure out how to share the news.

Now, they took a cab away from the DA’s office and all the fancy official buildings, going instead in the direction of the Vallier’s place and the relatively more suburban Hell’s Kitchen. Matt looked steadily more confused as they got out, paid the fare, and crossed the parking lot.

“This is it.” She pulled him up to the automatic doors.

He cocked his head as the doors slid open. “This is it? Smells like Target.”

“Good job.”

His lips twitched. “If I didn’t have absolute faith in you, I’d be seriously questioning why you think Target is an appropriate place for this.”

Bit rich coming from someone who proposed marriage in a public restroom. “You know I love a man of faith,” she countered lightly.

They wound their way through the store. She paused once, considering stretching this out and dragging him to other departments just to confuse him, but as soon as they stopped walking, he sort of bounced on his toes and that was all the incentive she needed to keep going. She led him straight to the baby department until they arrived at the aisles bearing baby clothes.

She let go of his hand. “Go ahead.”

She wanted to let him discover this the way he liked to discover her: slowly, deliberately, using his senses one by one until he built up a picture.

He shot her what was probably supposed to be a skeptical look, except he was too obviously excited. He stepped out of the main aisle and his cane bumped against a display of baby blankets, knocking one loose. Ducking too quickly to really sell the blind thing, he picked it up and his jaw dropped. “Karen, this is _so soft_.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Why have I not been shopping here my whole life?”

“I’m pretty sure your silk sheets are nicer than Target’s baby blankets.”

His forehead creased in thought. “It’s a different kind of soft,” he decided at last.

“Maybe,” she said, coming up behind him and carefully taking the blanket out of his hands, “but it’s not what you’re looking for.”

He sighed as she returned the blanket to the stand. “Are you going to tell me what exactly I _am_ looking for?”

“Just…keep going.”

Taking a deep breath, he started moving again, holding his cane closer this time, slipping past stands and shelves with blankets and toys and pacifiers until he got to the section for baby clothes. Then he stopped.

“Karen?”

He must’ve heard her breathing hitch. It was just that…standing there, surrounded by pink pajamas and tiny socks, he looked so entirely out of place, and yet…not at all.

“Nothing.” She caught up to him. “Tell me, what are you thinking?”

“Well,” he said, tipping his head from side to side with his lips parted. “Smells like…clothing? Clean, never been worn.”

“We’re in a store, Matt. I hope all this stuff has never been worn.” She smirked and made sure it came through in her voice. “Is that the best you can do?”

“I’m not done.” His hand found hers unerringly and she realized that his was trembling just a little. “They’re all…everything is so _small_.”

She just nodded.

“Okay.” He took a step forward, breathing in deeply. He moved farther down the aisle while she kept pace, wondering what he thought he was looking for as he passed racks of shirts and shelves of shoes.

Then he stopped in front of a stand bearing frilly dresses.

The back of his neck flushed slightly as he tightened his grip on her hand for an instant, then let go. Wordless, he passed her his cane so he could run both hands down the fabric of a little dress, bright as a yellow starburst. He rubbed the lace of a skirt between his fingers and said, “Huh.”

Her cheeks hurt as she smiled.

“Huh,” he repeated, stepping back with a loud sniff. His throat worked silently for a moment and he swallowed. “It’s, uh. We’re having a girl?”

“Yeah,” she whispered.

“That’s, uh…wow.”

Her thoughts exactly.

“I didn’t…” He rubbed his eyes under his glasses and let out a shaky breath, then spoke very quickly. “I didn’t realize how much _harder_ it is to be on the receiving end of this kind of thing and having to process everything all at once like this, with you just standing there smugly, and I—”

She wrapped her arms around him, effectively silencing him.

“I’m fine,” he said tightly in her ear.

“For once I believe you when you say that.”

He laughed, then turned to dot kisses along her cheekbone and temple and up across her forehead. “If she’s as smart and beautiful as you…”

“Aww, sweet.” She nestled closer. She wasn’t sure how long they stood like that, together. They only broke apart because Matt wanted to call his mom.

(First, though, they had to buy the dress.)

“You mind?” he asked in the parking lot, face alit with boyish excitement. He was holding the bag with the dress and wouldn’t let go.

“Go ahead.” Stepping back a bit, she leaned against the store’s brick walls and watched while he instructed his phone to “Call Mom.” He was turning in small circles waiting for Maggie to pick up, and as soon as she did he started talking, waving his free hand around, drawing pictures in the air that neither he nor Maggie could see.

Karen couldn’t actually hear whatever Maggie was saying, but she could imagine.

Staring at the sidewalk beneath her shoes, Karen tried to picture what her mom would say upon hearing the news. Imagined the way her eyes would shine and how it would feel when they hugged each other.

Shaking her head, Karen looked up. Matt was still on the phone, just listening to whatever Maggie was saying with his eyes closed and his face tilted towards the sun.

Keeping her gaze on him, she reached her hand into her pocket and pulled out her phone. She thumbed through the contacts. It was okay. However he reacted, whatever he did or didn’t say, it would be okay.

Finally she held the phone to her ear and listened to it ring.

After four rings, she heard his voice. “Karen?”

She swallowed. “…Hey, Dad. I have something to tell you.”

 

 

Ella

Even though people weren’t guarding her house anymore, she’d gotten in the habit of checking the roof every once in a while, especially at night. Sometimes Matt or Peter were there. She’d lecture them on not coming inside and they’d explain that they were only stopping briefly in the middle of patrolling, but she’d tell them they should come in for a little bit anyway, maybe for some water and a snack, and they always agreed before they were off again.

Tonight, the person on the roof wasn’t Matt or Peter. It was Stone, sitting in the shadows. Stiff. She could tell because she recognized him but also because, unlike Matt or Peter, Stone didn’t say anything to her or even _look_ at her, just sat there like he wanted to pretend she hadn’t noticed him.

Something told Ella to be careful in her approach, in case she scared him off. She pulled her jacket tighter over her pajamas and stepped carefully out onto the grass, cold and wet through her slippers. She didn’t talk as she climbed onto the shed and jumped onto the roof, then walked carefully over beside him. He was sitting on the downward slant of the roof, playing with a knife like usual, and he threw out a hand when she slipped. She didn’t fall, though. He didn’t have to worry.

She plunked down next to him, close enough to feel the chill on his jacket. “Have you been up here very long?”

“No.”

That didn’t sound like the truth.                                                                      

“Are you doing okay?”

He made a low, scoffing sound. “Everything’s fine. I’m making sure it stays that way.”

She still didn’t think he was telling the truth. She thought about what she knew about Stone, trying to figure out what was making him upset. But…she didn’t actually know much about his life. “Did something happen with Matt?” she guessed.

“No.”

Miss Esther _told_ her not to guess. Specific questions that weren’t open-ended, that was what she was supposed to ask. But she didn’t know enough about Stone to ask specific questions about parts of his life, so maybe she could ask specific questions about how he felt. “Are you worried about anything?”

“Why do you care?” he snapped.

Why _wouldn’t_ she care? That hurt her feelings a little bit, actually, but she tried not to let it show. “Now I’m thinking you’re angry about something,” she suggested teasingly.

He sighed. “I…I made a mistake.”

She opened her mouth to ask about it, but Miss Esther said sometimes listening was better, so she didn’t say anything, just scooted a little closer and, when Stone didn’t move away, leaned her head against his arm.

“You know who Dex is, don’t you?” he asked at last.

“He, um, drugged me, I think?” She didn’t remember it, really. Just the nightmares from afterwards. But Dad had explained what happened over and over, whenever she got confused.

“And he shot Matt, once. You were there, weren’t you?”

She shuddered and nodded.

“He’s not a good person. But…” Stone traced the knife along the roof shingles. “I’ve been working with him. Trying to help him be a better person, I suppose.”

“Is it helping?”

Stone snorted. “Not anymore.”

She waited. He didn’t say anything. _Don’t guess_. She studied his face, the half of it she could see from where she was sitting against him. “What happened?”

“He’s always had these people in his life. He calls them north stars. They’re supposed to help him make good choices.”

“Like Miss Esther?” Ella interrupted, then wanted to kick herself. _Don’t guess._

“Who?”

“Never mind.”

Stone shrugged, jostling her a little. “Sometimes the people he chooses actually help him. Sometimes they only make things worse. He chose one woman once who…” His hand tightened around his knife. “She was evil.”

“Evil how?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“What happened to her?”

Stone leaned back on his elbows, tipping his head to meet Ella’s gaze, like he was sizing her up to decide if he should tell her. Ella tried to look calm and brave and grown up. Stone held her gaze and said, “I killed her.”

Actually, that was kind of what she’d thought. She nodded encouragingly.

“It was the only way to stop her. I didn’t enjoy it, but…” Stone rolled his eyes away and stared up at the night sky. “Dex found out and now he’s disappeared. And I guess you could say it’s my fault.”

Oh, no. “Are you gonna go find him?”

Stone grimaced. “That, ah…might not go so well.”

Then he shifted slightly, and she saw dark red on his shoulder under the white light of the moon. She gasped.

“Yeah,” he said icily.

She thought fast. Stone was upset. Stone was _so_ upset. And Stone obviously wasn’t gonna ask Matt for help. Which made Ella wonder if he’d said all that stuff because he wanted _her_ help.

But…how was she supposed to help? She wasn’t a grownup. She wasn’t a hero like Matt and Peter. Maybe if Peter was still around all the time, she could tell him what was going on. But he wasn’t and she didn’t know how to find him.

Except…she didn’t like Dex. He shot Matt right and he made her get sick with that devil drug. She was pretty sure he’d done other bad things too, things Matt and her parents just hadn’t told her about yet.

The point was, Dex was a bad guy. But…Stone used to be a bad guy. Stone kidnapped Ella and Stone used to hurt Matt. But now Stone was getting better. Because people were helping him.

And Ella couldn’t help thinking about all the things she did that weren’t good. All the times she disobeyed Micah and Maeva and argued with her friends for no reason and got into fights and…just, she did lots of things she wasn’t supposed to. But she knew for a fact that if _she_ ran away, Micah and Maeva would want her back. And Matt would definitely find her.

Huh. Matt would find her.

She narrowed her eyes at Stone, who was just staring straight out into the neighborhood, jaw tight with anger, and probably pain. Dex hurt him. Bad. Bad enough that he couldn’t go after Dex on his own.

So…maybe Ella _could_ help. Because if Ella found Dex and Matt found her, then Matt would find Dex and bring him back even if Stone never told Matt that Dex was missing in the first place.

Besides, it sounded like someone just needed to talk to Dex and she was learning so much about how to talk to people from Miss Esther. She was probably better at talking to people than Stone was. Not that Stone wasn’t cool, but he was…a little weird. So maybe _she_ could talk to Dex while she was waiting for Matt to find them.

It was a plan. Definitely not a plan that Micah or Maeva (or Matt or…anyone) would be happy about. Micah and Maeva would definitely tell her not to do it. And they’d told her not to run away. But it wasn’t really disobeying if she was helping someone, right? And she didn’t need everyone treating her like a little kid anymore. After all, she’d figured out how to make sure she testified all on her own and everyone said she did great.

She wasn’t actually sure how to find Dex, though. She pretty much just got lucky before, when she found Matt in the tunnels.

The tunnels. Didn’t Stone say the person Dex lost died in the tunnels?

She did _not_ want to go into the tunnels if there was a dead person waiting for her. She didn’t want to go into the tunnels at all. But she didn’t really want to find Dex either, and that wasn’t stopping her.

Okay. Except Stone was still a problem. Sitting up on her roof meant he wanted to protect her, which was really nice of him, but that meant he’d never agree to let her find Dex. So he needed to leave before she could leave.

And how was she supposed to make him leave? She _could_ try using some of the fighting moves Matt taught her, which would be kind of fun…but no, that was a bad idea. Stone was hurt. She didn’t need to hurt him _worse_.

Better idea: make him _want_ to leave. And she had a pretty good idea of how to do that.

“Stone,” she said softly.

“What,” he said grumpily.

She took a deep breath and said, “You must feel _terrible_.”

His head turned, face scrunched up. Definitely annoyed. “Excuse me?”

“I’m so sorry,” she said, widening her eyes at him. “You were just trying to help Dex, and it didn’t work. You must be so upset.”

“What—”

She put her hand on his shoulder. The not-injured one. “It’s okay to be upset, you know.”

“Ella. It’s fine.”

“I think sometimes the harder we try to pretend everything’s okay just means what’s really going on is so much worse, you know?” She tilted her head at him. “It’s not good to keep all that stuff inside. You should talk about it.”

He suddenly stood up, brushing off his pants. “It’s past your bedtime.”

“How do you know?” she asked hotly.

“Go to bed, Ella. Don’t worry about it.” And with that, he kind of just…stepped off the edge of the roof. By the time she’d managed to inch her way over to the very edge, he’d disappeared.

Perfect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quick note regarding the Bar: Matt should TOTALLY be disbarred, but it's not mandatory in the same sense that it would've been mandatory if he'd been convicted of a felony, so I'm leaning into a) the room for discretion and the fact that the legal system in New York is pretty corrupt in every direction imaginable in this universe, but mostly b) he gets away with it at one point in the comics.


	52. You Will Never Have a Hold of Me Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Drag Me Down" by Write This Down (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_2rFNSDvBQ) which is a song that I super associate with Matt and Stone and Stick, but I felt like it also fit here with Dex and Ella because, wow, all these characters have had some messed up influences in their lives.

Ella

Stone was right—it _was_ past her bedtime. Mom came to get her only a few seconds after Stone left. Ella barely had time to get off the roof before Mom realized.

“Are you okay?” she asked while Ella was brushing her teeth. “You seem a little wound up tonight.”

Ella brushed harder and mumbled through the foam.

“Spit before you try to talk, you hooligan.”

Ella just hummed and kept brushing her teeth, hoping Mom would forget about it.

She should know better by now. Mom never forgot anything. They went into Ella’s room where Mom pulled the covers back and tucked her in like everything was normal (normal for Maeva, anyway—Ella couldn’t remember the last time Elizabeth tucked her in), but then instead of leaving she sat down on the edge of the bed. “So, are you gonna tell me what’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Ella said quickly, blushing guiltily.

Mom made a big deal out of studying Ella’s face. “You sure?”

“Mm-hmm.” Ella pulled the blankets up to her chin.

“Because you would tell me, wouldn’t you, if something was going on? Good or bad?” She lowered her voice like she was telling a secret. “Or you could tell Dad. You don’t have to tell me.”

No way. If Mom and Dad kept secrets from each other, Ella didn’t know about it. So completely different from what she remembered from Kyle and Elizabeth.

Mom sat still for a little longer, obviously trying to wait Ella out.

And it was working. Ella tried not to squirm. Mom and Dad had a lot of rules for her when they adopted her, and they made up new ones all the time whenever Ella did some new thing they thought was bad (unlike Kyle and Elizabeth, who never seemed to care). And as much as Ella wanted to think the rules were stupid…they usually weren’t, not really. Mom and Dad took the time to explain them (unlike at Everett’s, when no one had time to answer all of Ella’s questions about the rules). Leaving the house at night, alone, was against the rules.

But what if she had a good _reason_ for breaking the rules? She was just trying to help people, and Mom and Dad _wanted_ her to help people. And someone had to help Stone and Dex _right now_ , but if she told either Mom or Dad, they definitely wouldn’t let her go.

_And what happens when you sneak away and they find out afterwards?_ a little voice asked in the back of her head. _They’ll be so angry and disappointed in you. You know they will._

Maybe she could sneak back home before they were awake, before they even realized she’d run away?

_Then you’ll have to lie to them about what you did,_ the little voice pointed out.

She shoved that to the back of her mind and smiled up at Mom. “Goodnight. I love you.”

Mom’s sigh was quiet and sad and definitely already disappointed. She leaned forward to kiss Ella’s forehead anyway. “Goodnight. I love you.”

Guilt churning away in her stomach, Ella snuggled down among her blankets, trying to look as tired and cozy as possible. She couldn’t tell for sure whether Mom bought it. She didn’t think she did.

Which was confirmed an hour or so later when Mom crept back into the room, creaking the door open. Ella was burrowed under her blankets, so Mom had to sneak all the way up to the bed and run her hand over the curl of Ella’s body to make sure it really was her and not just a pile of pillows.

Mom was good at this. Very good.

After another hour, Dad was the one to come check on her. He didn’t go into the room, though, like he thought his heavier footsteps would give him away or wake Ella up. But he must’ve decided Ella was in bed asleep because he left.

Holding her breath, Ella sat up. She couldn’t hear anything in the rest of the house. She slid out of bed. Still, quiet. She tugged on her jacket and shoes and pulled a hat down over her hair and grabbed her flashlight. She considered grabbing her stuffed Aslan toy…but she wasn’t a little kid anymore. (She was almost eight!) The last thing she did before she left was reach under her bed and take the knife Stone had given her.

(Maybe he knew, even back then, that he’d need her help.)

She inched her door open and headed towards the stairs, but she stopped in front of Mom and Dad’s bedroom. She could hear their slow breaths while they slept.

“I’m really sorry,” she whispered.

Then she took each step of the stairs one by one, sticking to the edge of the wall. Her heart was almost thumping out of her chest, it was crazy her parents couldn’t hear it. They never came running out of their room, though, not even when she was downstairs, not even when she was carefully, carefully opening the door to the backyard, lit up by the moon.

She pulled the door shut and breathed out in relief when she heard it _click_ shut.

Okay. Now she just had to figure out how to find those tunnels.

 

 

Matt

The streets were mostly quiet tonight, just as it had been for the past week or so. Yet it was starting to feel less peaceful and more as if the criminal element was holding its breath now that Matt was back, now that Daredevil was patrolling again. Holding its breath, preparing for the chance to test the new limits.

He heard their voices sometimes, like chittering rats. Talking about him. But they weren’t doing anything yet.

Maybe it was reckless, but Matt wished they’d just get on with it already.

He flitted high above the streets, winding his way at a brisk pace through the jungle of Hell’s Kitchen rooftops. He wore the mask, but he felt, weirdly, just as much like Matt Murdock as like Daredevil. It was a pleasant albeit unfamiliar experience.

His phone buzzed. Probably Karen—sleeping was apparently a challenge these days. She kept complaining that the kid was taking after Matt and engaging in acrobatics as soon as the sun went down. “Hey, what’s—”

“Ella’s missing,” Micah interrupted, panic spiking his voice.

“What?” Matt swiveled automatically in the direction of the Valliers’ house. “Since when?”

“Tonight! I thought she was asleep, but Maeva said she was acting weird, but we didn’t—we _checked_ , but she must’ve stayed up until we fell asleep.”

Matt started jogging towards the suburbs. “Why would she do this? Did something happen?”

“I don’t know, I have no idea what—she didn’t talk to us, she didn’t—”

“Calm down,” Matt ordered, not sounding very calm himself. “Where would she go?”

“She’s not at any of her friends’ houses, we called, and she’s not at her grandparents’ place.”

“I assume there’s no sign of a forced entry?” It would definitely be the first thing Micah would’ve mentioned, but Matt couldn’t help double-checking.

“No sign of it, but…”

“I’m on my way,” Matt said. “I’ll see what I can pick up, either from her or from…someone else. If that’s the case.” He hung up and ran faster, taking every shortcut the city had to offer.

He reached the neighborhood in ten minutes, but he bypassed the Valliers’ house and headed for a roof a few houses down to figure out why the air smelled like Stone’s blood.

Stone was sitting on the edge of the roof, awkwardly trying to stitch a deep cut in his own shoulder. “What happened to you?” Matt hissed.

Stone stood stiffly as Matt approached, leaving the stitching unfinished, a trail of thread catching in the wind. “You’re looking for Ella, aren’t you?”

Matt braced himself. “You know what happened.”

Stone shook his head. “I just know she’s gone. But I think I know why she left.”

There was a tone in his voice Matt wasn’t used to hearing. Regret? _Guilt?_ “Tell me what happened,” Matt growled.

Stone hesitated, heart beating too fast. He wet his lips. “I, uh…Dex, uh…”

Dex? The hell did he have to do with this? “Spit it out.”

Stone inhaled sharply. “Dex found out about Gao.”

Oh. Oh. Matt flashbacked to tunnels, to Gao dripping blood, to turning away while Stone sliced off her head. He shoved the memory to the back of his mind. “What’s that got to do with Ella?”

“I—I came here to make sure she was safe—”

“Why wouldn’t she be safe?” Matt demanded.

“I don’t know!” Stone’s fingers were clenching and unclenching at his sides. “But Dex was furious, and he went after her before, so I thought it wasn’t worth the—”

“Dex isn’t here.”

“She found me on the roof, and she started asking all these questions, like she cared, and so I—I told her it was my fault that Dex lost Gao—”

“You told her we killed her?” Matt cut in.

“ _We_ didn’t kill her.”

“I didn’t stop you.”

Stone scrubbed his hand over his eyes. “She was so worried, Matty.”

“About Dex?” Matt asked in disbelief.

“Yes? Perhaps? Or…” Stone cleared his throat. “About me.”

Of course. _Of course._ Matt swore under his breath. “Okay, so she…she went out looking for you? Is that what happened?” They could work with that. Maybe. Hell’s Kitchen was a death trap for a seven-year-old girl out alone, but maybe she’d go unnoticed long enough for Matt and Stone to find her.

But Stone was shaking her head. “If she wanted to find me, she would’ve contacted you. Her parents could have called you, yes? I don’t think she wanted to _find_ me. I think…I think she wanted to _help_ me.”

No. No, no, no.

Because from Ella’s point of view, helping Stone meant…helping Dex.

 

 

Ella

She was lost.

Last time, she’d been looking for Matt and Foggy’s office, and she’d found it by _accident_ , and she’d found a hole to the tunnels by the office. She didn’t think she’d get lucky enough to accidentally find the office again, but there were lots of other holes to the tunnels. There was definitely one sort of close to -her house, because that was the one Matt used to take her back home. It couldn’t be too hard to find it again.

Actually, it was turning out to be very hard. But she wasn’t about to quit. She was in some kind of old shopping strip, which didn’t feel right at all, but backtracking seemed like a waste of time, so…

Wait.

She squinted. It was hard to see in the dark (half the streetlights were out), but was that a shadow coming towards her?

A _person_.

A man.

Ella pressed herself against a store window. Maybe he hadn’t seen her. And he was walking kind of unsteady, like Kyle when he drank too much. Maybe he was drunk. Maybe he’d walk right past her and not even notice.

Nope. He noticed.

He stumbled to a halt. “Li’l girl?” he slurred.

She tried to sound strong. “Go away.”

He came closer, towering over her. “S’too late for you t’be out here.”

Ella pulled out the knife (even though she had _no idea_ what to do with it). “Go away! Leave me alone!”

He stopped dead, but his eyes lit up with a terrible gleam. “You think yer brave, huh?” He reached out fast and his giant, meaty, sweaty hand wrapped around her entire wrist. A twist, and she lost her grip on the knife.

She tried to remember everything she could about all the stuff Matt trained her to do. One thing was clear: he’d told her that the _first_ thing she should always do, before she tried to fight or anything, was yell. Yell for help.

But no one was around. No one good, anyway.

The man took his eyes off her to look at her knife. “Cute. Whatcha thinkya gonna do wi’this, honey?”

Ella sucked in a breath and punched him right between the legs. Howling, he doubled over, and she booked it away from him, running as fast as she could. She didn’t stop until she ran out of breath. Then she looked over her shoulder. No one was following her.

Okay, good. She sucked in big gulps of air. She’d lost her knife but…she did it! She used the skills Matt gave her!

So why were her hands shaking?

Why did she feel like _crying?_

She bit down hard on her lip as a thought slammed into her brain: _I should be dead._

Her chest tightened and it got hard to breathe. She’d felt like this before, sometimes when Kyle yelled at her, more recently last year when she was kidnapped in a garage. But Matt had been there that time, and he’d made her feel safe enough to calm down.

Matt wasn’t here right now—because she’d decided she should fix everything all on her own.

Stupid, _stupid_.

Okay. Deep breathes. She concentrated, counting the seconds (not daring to close her eyes). _One, two, three four. One, two, three, four._ Slowly, her heart stopped racing and her lungs started working again.

Okay.

Her head cleared. Maybe she should go back home. Maybe this was all teaching her a lesson. She should go home and wake up Mom and Dad and ask them to help her—

No. They wouldn’t understand. They didn’t know Dex or Stone at all. Dad would say it was too dangerous. Maybe they’d ask Matt to help, but _Stone_ hadn’t asked Matt for help, and there had to be a reason.

It had to be her. She could do this.

 

 

Matt

He stood on the roof, pushing his senses as far as they could go. Her scent had dissipated in the cold night air, and how was he supposed to _hear_ one seven-year-old girl who was trying to go unnoticed?

A blaring horn caught is attention and he shook his head sharply to clear it.

“Concentrate,” Stone murmured.

“Shut _up_.” Matt stepped closer to the edge of the roof, tilting his head. He remembered when the Hand stole Karen, trying to block everything out and find her. That had been hard enough, yet she’d been on a _bus_ surrounded by _ninjas_. This?

This wasn’t working.

He thought he caught something, some soft sound that might possibly be her at the very edge of his range. Wait, yes, that was her voice, yelling at someone to go away—he leaned forward, and—

Stone grabbed his arm and jerked him back before he could fall off the roof. “Are you insane?”

Matt tore out of Stone’s grasp. “I had her, I—” No, no, no. The city had swallowed her up. “ _Damnit_.” He gave himself one more second, one single second to hear something else. Nothing. His mission crystalized, so he jumped off the edge of the roof, shoulder-rolling to absorb the impact of the fall. “She was yelling, she’s in trouble.”

Stone landed beside him and stumbled, fresh blood blooming around his hip. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I never meant to—”

“It’s not your fault,” Matt interrupted curtly. “You know what she’s like.”

“You were right,” Stone whispered. “You were right about Dex.”

That didn’t matter now. Matt kept moving, listening for the slightest sounds of her. He shut out the voices that were becoming more and more common each night he went out: rough voices muttering about Daredevil, how Daredevil wasn’t so scary after all. Just a blind guy, right? Just Matt Murdock. A _lawyer_.

Sometimes he heard Karen’s name, or Foggy’s, or Claire’s, which sent chills up his spine and made him throw his punches that much harder, even though the voices disappeared before he could hunt them down.

Tonight, he thought he heard Ella’s name.

Matt almost tripped. “Wait—”

Stone prodded him forward. “Whatever it is, it’s not important.”

“You hear that?” Matt shoved Stone back and turned in a slow circle, straining his ears.

“Not the time. We need to find Ella.”

Matt took two steps towards the voices—he thought. But they’d been at the very edge of his range and now he couldn’t hear them at all.

“Matty, come _on_.”

“They said her name,” Matt breathed, tilting his head a different direction, concentrating. Nothing, he got nothing past the sounds of the city. He stood with baited breath, listening, listening.

There—her tiny voice shouting defiantly: “Leave me alone!”

Matt took off like a demon through the underworld. Stone had no chance of keeping up.

“Go away!” she commanded.

He heard laughter.

Her voice shrank to something tremulous. “Please go away.”

Three men surrounded her. All drunk, but not drunk enough to render them inept. Matt landed on the roof above them just as one of them reached out and grabbed her wrist.

Ella shrieked and tried to get away, but she was too small. Matt flipped off the roof, landing right behind them, and hooked his arm around the man’s throat, jerking him up and backwards. Ella pulled free with a pained cry.

One of the other men foolishly tried to get at Matt from behind. Matt sent a snapping back-kick into the man’s chest, knocking the air out of him and sending him sprawling back without ever letting go of his chokehold on the first man. But the third didn’t seem to care about Matt.

He drew a switchblade and went after Ella.

Matt had no choice but to abandon the rest of the fight, throwing the first guy aside and lunging to plant himself between Ella and her attacker. She tried to stumble away, forcing Matt to shift to stay in front of her.

He’d hoped his reputation would be enough to get the men to back off. He wouldn’t have to let the Devil out in front of Ella. But instead of fleeing the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, the men regrouped in a cluster.

“Isn’t he blind?” one of them sneered.

They started to close in, yet maintained a tense perimeter around Matt and Ella. A border no one seemed willing to cross, a fragile truce no one wanted to break. Matt tried to block out Ella’s panicked, wispy breaths behind him to focus on his enemies, determined to catch the slightest sign of a first move.

One of the men shifted his weight.

Normally, Matt would strike like lightning, exploiting his opponent’s new instability and sending a message to his companions before the other two could coordinate attacks. But doing that now would leave Ella exposed. So Matt stayed.

And the two men realized what the third was planning.

And then they all surged forward as one.

The strikes were clumsy, but there were just too many to block at once. He tried to focus on the knife—no reason he couldn’t absorb a few of the other hits—but the knife-wielder was on his right and the attacker on his far left made a rash charge, trying to get around to Ella. Matt twisted to stay between them and felt the knife slice across his side.

At least the guy was stupid enough to slice instead of stab.

It was just…the knife cut right through Matt’s still-healing wound from when he was shanked in prison.

He sucked in a breath as the world on fire blinked for a second, and he got lucky when he landed a weak hit on the guy going for Ella.

“Matt!” Ella yelled.

Ignoring that, Matt grabbed the guy’s arm just to hold him in place for a second. He needed to end this. _Now_.

So he kicked straight through the side of the guy’s knee. Bone shattered. The man passed out mid-scream.

And his companions faltered.

Ella spun around and started running.

Good. Good. Matt turned on two men still standing, who both raised their hands as if in surrender. The guy with the knife dropped the weapon in terror. But Matt wasn’t in the mood to be merciful.

By the time he was finished with them, his hands dripped with their blood and the knife was driven deeply into its owner’s leg.

Matt bit back the urge to drive it deeper. “I wouldn’t touch that if I were you,” he said coldly. “It’s the only thing stopping you from bleeding out.”

They all deserved it.

Instead, he backed off, trying to sense where Ella was. He lifted his head and pressed his hand over his bleeding side and caught his breath, only to discover that Ella was gone.

 

Ella

_She was in so much trouble._

Her heart thundered in her chest and her ears and her wrist really, really hurt, but she kept going. Matt was an _amazing_ fighter, and the only reason he’d gotten hurt was because he’d been trying to protect her. Which meant she had to get out of there so he could just worry about himself.

Besides, now she really, really, _really_ had to find Dex. If she wasn’t able to help Dex and Stone, Matt would’ve gotten hurt for nothing.

The problem was, she kept running into holes that didn’t lead anywhere, or holes that were covered up and she couldn’t get through. But finally, _finally_ , she found one that actually led to the tunnels.

Unless there were lots of tunnels that weren’t connected?

Probably not. And no way to tell the difference without exploring, anyway, so she might as well get going. No time to be scared. At any moment, her parents might realize she was gone, and they might call Matt, and if Matt found her before she found Dex, all of this would be _pointless_.

She slipped into the tunnel and clicked on her flashlight and told herself to be brave. No monsters leapt out of the shadows. Nothing tried to grab her feet or bite her.

Just tunnels. No big deal.

Swinging the flashlight ahead of herself, she started walking.

And kept walking.

Walking and walking and walking until her feet and legs ached. But she knew she couldn’t stop or even slow down. Even though Matt was hurt, she was shocked he hadn’t caught up to her already to put a stop to this whole thing.

Maye…maybe he’d lost her?

_That_ thought sent a spike of panic through her chest. This whole plan only worked if he found her.

Well, even if he’d lost her, he’d find her again. He had to. He always did.

A sound up ahead interrupted her thoughts. It sounded like…like a person, crying quietly. Dex?

She wished she still had her knife.

Clicking off the flashlight, she snuck down the tunnel, rounding a corner. The thin tunnel opened up into a wider room, dimly lit by the light of a dirty lightbulb. And there he was, sitting hunched in the very center, surrounded by a mess of wood splinters and torn paper and…oh.

And a body.

Ella looked away, focusing on Dex. He looked like he felt _awful_. He was the one who was crying, but not in the fresh, loud, sobbing kind of way. The small sounds he was making were tired, like he’d been crying for hours and hours already. Poor Dex.

Her heart pounded as she crept up behind him, but he couldn’t hear as good as Matt and Stone could.

“Dex?” she asked softly.

He shot to his feet and spun around and a paintbrush flew at her face so fast that it splintered against the wall behind her when she ducked.

“ _What do you want?_ ” he screamed.

She started to jumped back behind the corner, but he was too fast. He threw something else, a giant splinter that stuck in her arm when she shielded her face.

Shrieking, she pressed herself behind the wall, feeling the cold stone through her sweaty shirt. The sight of the stick in her arm made her dizzy. Squeezing her eyes shut, she pulled it out slowly, locking her teeth around another shriek.

She was okay. She was okay. The blood wasn’t gonna kill her, remember? She’d bled a lot when she was sick with that drug, but the drug was _way_ worse than the blood. And Matt was almost always bleeding somewhere but that didn’t stop _him_ from helping people. She was okay.

“Dex?” she whispered.

He didn’t say anything, but she could hear him breathing loudly. Forced deep breaths, like he was trying really hard to calm down.

She gave him a few minutes, pressing her hand to the hole in her arm, wrinkling her nose at the slick, bloody feeling. She was getting used to the pain, though, both in her arm and her wrist.

And she’d come too far to quit now.

Except…he could actually kill her. Her legs trembled.

She stayed behind the wall. “Dex?” she called again. Her voice shook. Most people felt bad for her whenever her voice shook like that and sometimes they were nicer to her because of it, but she didn’t think Dex would care.

His breathing stuttered.

“I’m really sorry you’re upset,” she said. “I…I know what happened. To, um, to that woman who was helping you. That sounds really hard.”

There was a pause. Then Dex’s shaky voice reached out to her. “You know about Madame Gao?”

“A little.” She leaned against the wall. A drop of her blood landed on her white shoe. Ew. “Stone told me. He helps people, Dex. I mean, he’s done some bad things, but—”

“I _needed_ her.”

“I get it,” she said quietly. “Are there maybe other people that, um, that can…?” She trailed off uncertainly.

He didn’t answer.

She edged around the corner. He saw her, but he didn’t throw anything, didn’t _do_ anything. Just looked at her. She remembered how Matt had been when he talked to her right after Stone told her about her dad. (Stone lied back then, but she wanted to forgive him for that, although it’d be easier if he’d apologize for it or something.) She sat down carefully, carefully on the cold floor.

“Stone hurt me too,” she told Dex.

His eyes narrowed at her. “But you think he’s a good guy.”

“Because he _is_ , now.” She folded her hands in her lap. “He helps me and he helps M—um. Daredevil.”

“It’s okay,” Dex said tiredly, wiping what was left of the tears off his face. “I know who Matt is. I guess everyone knows, now.”

“Stone said, um…Stone said she was evil. Madame Gao.”

She expected Dex to argue or maybe even throw something. Instead, he glanced away from her. “Yeah. But she cared about me.”

“Wait, _you_ think she was evil?” That made no sense. “How come you like her so much, then?”

Dex slumped a little lower where he was sitting. “I just—I didn’t—she didn’t have to _die_.”

Ella didn’t know what to say. If he thought she was evil, why would he care that she was dead? Except….

Dex looked back up. “You’re too young to be down here.”

She was starting to feel too young. “Um, Dex? I know what you’re talking about.”

His short laugh was angry. “Trust me, you _really_ don’t.”

“No, really. Because, um, my old dad was…” Not evil, was he? He still used to do nice things for her sometimes, and sometimes he’d laugh at her jokes or read to her before bed or buy her dolls which was a little weird because she didn’t actually like dolls very much. But still. “My old dad was bad. He hurt me and he hurt other people, too. But when he died—”

“Matt killed him,” Dex interrupted. “He’s a hypocrite and so’s Stone.”

Ella wasn’t totally sure what a hypocrite was but it sounded bad. “They’re _not_ ,” she said hotly.

“You think so? You think they’re perfect?” Dex sat up straighter. “Hate to have to break it to you, kid, but no one’s perfect and definitely not Matt or Stone.” His face twisted up. “They just lie and try to control you but the whole time they’re hurting you behind your back.”

“That’s not true!”

“Stone killed Madam Gao when I wasn’t looking,” he shot back, “and Matt killed your dad when _you_ weren’t looking.”

“It’s not the same _thing_.”

Dex suddenly sounded exhausted. “Yeah, you tell yourself that now. Don’t come crying to me when you figure it out later.”

Ella bit her lip. “I was trying to say something, though.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Guess you were.”

“I was telling you that when my dad died, it really hurt.” And it still hurt sometimes. It wasn’t that long ago. “I’m glad he can’t get to me anymore, but I wish he could’ve…had another chance.”

Dex frowned. “Do you actually know what kinds of stuff your dad did?”

No, she knew there was stuff no one had told her about yet. She didn’t _want_ to know. “I’m just saying I know what it’s like to know that someone’s bad, or even _evil_ , and still be sad because they’re gone.”

Slowly, Dex drew his knees up to his chest and breathed quietly for a long time. Ella kept thinking of other things to say, but something told her to keep quiet for once. Just be there. Just listen.

“How?” Dex asked suddenly.

“What?”

“How do you handle it?”

“Handle what? Being sad?”

He shook his head, blowing out his breath in obvious frustration. “Trusting people. Trusting anyone. After everything that happened.”

It seemed like he really wanted to know. Which was weird. He was a grownup, how was she supposed to have answers he didn’t?

She thought about it, and thought about it. Trust. She trusted people. She trusted Mom and Dad and Matt.

_Not with everything,_ the little voice pointed out unhelpfully. _Not with this._

“I don’t know,” she realized out loud.

Dex groaned through gritted teeth she’d been his last chance.

“But I’m figuring it out,” she added quickly. “I’m…I’m learning. I think.” That was true, right?

“How?” Dex demanded.

“By, um…I don’t know. I guess you just kind of have to…do it. But, like, with _good_ people.” That was the problem, wasn’t it? Dex kept choosing the wrong people? “So, um, you have to figure out that they’re good first, _before_ you start trusting them.”

Dex didn’t say anything to that, but it looked like he was thinking about it. She thought it was better to not interrupt, so she sat back. Eventually, she mustered up the courage to look at the cut in her arm.

It looked awful. Maybe it would scar.

But this was a scar she didn’t really mind because this was a scar she’d gotten helping someone else.


	53. Take Me Back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Take Me Back" by Meredith Andrews (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVx0WS3MSlY).

Matt

The hand not pressed to his injured side shook with leftover rage, scattering droplets of blood. He fought to get his breathing and heartrate back under control so he could listen.

But the streets were quiet.

At first, he’d (foolishly) thought Ella had left just to get somewhere safe during the fight. He’d (naively) assumed he’d find her waiting for him a block or so away. Instead, she’d kept going until every trace of her became suddenly muffled. The tunnels. He set off after her, but he couldn’t keep quite the pace he’d set before thanks to his new injury.

He ground his teeth together in frustration and kept plodding on.

Eventually, he heard tired footsteps catching up to him from behind. Stone. “So you stopped to beat up some drunks?”

“They were the ones making her yell.”

Stone’s head snapped back in their direction, like he was wishing he’d done some damage of his own before leaving them behind. “So where is she?”

Matt just gestured grimly in the direction he was going.

“You’re hurt,” Stone observed.

Well, that made two of them. Matt didn’t slow down. Not that he’d been going all that fast to begin with.

_God, please, keep her safe._

Suddenly, Stone pulled Matt in a different direction. “This way.”

Matt tried to shake him off. “The trail leads—”

“You want to keep lagging behind her, be my guest, but she won’t stop until she finds Dex, and if Dex is in the tunnels, he’ll be where Gao is.” He jerked his head in the opposite direction. “This is a shortcut.”

Deliberately walking _away_ from Ella’s scent felt like turning his back on her. But Stone knew these tunnels better than Matt. Matt gritted his teeth. Apparently, he trusted Stone.

Stone led him on a straight path to something that showed up in Matt’s senses as…a manhole? He heard echoes underneath. Stone wrenched off the cover, and Matt immediately smelled blood. Her blood.

“Not again,” he muttered. He dropped down into the tunnel, landing in a crouch, swearing as the motion sent pain lancing through the tear in his side. “Not _again_.” He half expected Stone to tell him to calm down, but Stone merely landed beside him and drew his knives. Matt did not tell him to put them away. Stone passed him one of them. Matt took it.

He kind of wished Stone had brought his sword instead.

They moved as fast as they could down the tunnels, which wasn’t exactly very fast. Matt tried to push himself, and the pain lashed through him again and his footsteps stuttered on the gritty tunnel floor.

That was when he heard it.

He grabbed Stone’s arm, forcing him to a stop. “Shh. Shh, shh.” He tilted his head, straining his ears.

“What?” Stone hissed.

Matt swore under his breath at the sound of hushed voices.

“Everyone makes mistakes, Dex.” That was Ella, sounding far too old for her age. “Doesn’t mean they can’t still be good for you. I mean, _my_ parents tried to make Matt stop being a lawyer once, and they didn’t even tell me what was going on. But I know they’re trying to help me.”

“That’s not a very big mistake,” Dex said flatly.

“It was a _huge_ mistake,” Ella shot back, then seemed to gather herself. “What I’m _trying_ to say is, maybe Stone’s not perfect, and maybe sometimes he acts like a, um, a hippo…”

“Hypocrite,” Dex supplied.

“But that doesn’t mean he can’t be one of the good guys! You need to let the good guys help you.”

Stone twitched under Matt’s grasp. “What is it? What’s happening?”

“I hear her. Them. She’s... _talking_ to him. Oh, geeze.” Matt closed his eyes in dismay. “Now she’s asking him questions. She’s…what does she think she’s doing? She’s trying to _counsel_ him.”

“Is he threatening her?”

“No, just…” Matt grimaced. “Just talking.” He took a limping half-step forward and stopped. “I think you should stay back.”

Stone only partially argued. “Until something goes wrong.”

Ella’s voice mingled with Dex’s, echoing in a larger space. The smell of Gao’s body made it clear where they were. Trusting Stone to stay behind, Matt crept towards the point where the tunnel met the wider room. The tang of Ella’s blood settled on his tongue. Fury washed over him; he struggled to choke it back down.

He could tell by the temperature of the air around him that he was in the shadows, and he could tell by their heartbeats that neither Dex nor Ella had seen him. He stepped out of the shadows, holding his batons at the ready. “Ella, I need you to come over here for a second.”

She jumped; so did Dex, whose hand shot out to grab a shard of wood. He didn’t throw it, though, and in the back of Matt’s mind he wondered if he had Ella to thank for calming Dex down enough to think twice before attacking.

“Matt?” she whispered.

“Ella,” he repeated. “Come here.”

She got up slowly, like she knew any sudden movement might startle Dex, and started picking her way across the room.

Then Dex stood up, and she froze.

“Dex,” Matt said slowly, clearly, “I’m not here to hurt you. I just need to talk to Ella for a second.”

He didn’t relax, but something must have made Ella feel confident enough to continue towards Matt. She crossed the room quickly. Even from a distance, he could tell that her wrist was swollen, the temperature hotter than it should be. She’d sprained it getting free from those three men.

As soon as she reached him, he ducked to tuck her hair back behind her ears. “You all right?”

She wasn’t, but she nodded anyway. “Matt,” she whispered, very quietly and very seriously. “I’m worried about Dex.”

He pulled her a few steps away from him. “I know you are. So am I.” He raised his voice. “Dex, listen. You can’t stay down here.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dex said, completely emotionless.

All right, ordering him around probably wasn’t the best approach. Problem was, Matt had actually had very few interactions with Dex where one of them wasn’t trying to harm the other and most of what he could guess about Dex’s mental state came from those stolen therapist’s tapes. “Do you, uh…do you want to talk to Sister Maggie? Maybe she can—”

“What’m I doing here?” Dex’s voice suddenly sounded like someone had dragged it over a nailbed.

Matt nudged Ella behind him. “What do you mean?”

“I was _FBI_ , now I’m…” His hand twitched in a restless gesture. “No job. No home. No one.”

“Maybe, but…but we can work on changing that. All right? That’s what Stone’s been trying to do. Give you a fresh start.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not working.” Dex spun the shard of wood between his fingers.

Matt let out a low, quiet laugh.

Dex’s head snapped towards him. “ _What_.”

“Matt,” Ella warned.

He squeezed her hand and addressed Dex. “You just don’t strike me as the kinda guy who gives up so easily.”

Dex’s entire body stiffened. “You think this is _easy?_ ”

“I’m just saying, you tried to do exactly what your counselor told you when you joined the army and the FBI—”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot you think you know my entire childhood—”

“—and you tried to do what she said when you found all those people to help you, from Julie to Gao—”

“Don’t say—”

“And it’s _never_ been easy, Dex, not for you, so I don’t get why you’re quitting now that you’ve finally got someone who’s more interested in helping you than doing literally anything else!” His voice rang through the room like a gunshot by the end.

Dex held still, heart jackhammering. Matt couldn’t tell why.

With an effort, he softened his voice. “You’re right. It’s not easy. But—” He broke off when Ella bumped against him from behind. Dizzy from blood loss. “But you gotta let us help you, all right?” he said quickly, even as he turned around to press his hand to her face, feeling the temperature of her skin.

“Us?” Dex echoed uncertainly.

Stone stepped slowly from the shadows, maybe because he thought for some reason that Dex could handle the sight of him, maybe because he thought needed to intervene before Matt and Dex started fighting. “Dex?”

Dex didn't flinch at his appearance. His hand flexed around the shard in his hand, but he didn't throw it.

“I…wish none of that with Gao had happened,” Stone said.

A clumsy way to dodge apologizing for something he couldn’t actually feel sorry for. But Dex seemed to get it. He finally dropped the wooden shard. His voice slipped back into monotone. “She was dangerous. I know she needed to be stopped.”

Stone seemed too shocked by that to come up with a response.

Matt took a deep breath. “You’re right, Dex, but that doesn’t mean you have to be happy about it. You have a right to be angry.” He ran his hand up Ella’s arm, staying clear of the actual cut in her arm. “Stone,” he said, trying not to sound urgent. “I have to get her home.”

Stone approached Dex carefully, each step slow and deliberate. Then, to Matt’s surprise, Dex started moving too, until he met him halfway between them.

“I’m tired,” he said quietly.

Stone cleared his throat. “Come back to my place. We can decide what else needs to be done later.”

“ _We?_ ” Dex sounded disbelieving and barely hopeful.

Stone sheathed his knife. “Ah…yes. We.”

If Stone felt safe enough to sheathe his knife, Matt felt safe enough to focus his attention entirely on Ella. She must want to go home, but…. “I need to stop the bleeding before we leave.”

“That!” She pointed. “That’s the thing that was in my arm. A splinter.”

He knew. He could smell her blood all over it.

“It’s okay,” she assured him. “I’m not half as hurt as you always are, so I’m fine.”

That was…the best course of action for now was to pretend he hadn’t heard that frightening logic. “Just…just…if something like this happens again—” It wouldn’t, why would it, of _course_ it would. “Don’t take the thing out of your arm. It’ll just make you bleed more.”

“I couldn’t leave it _in_ ,” she gasped, offended. “It looked _ugly_.” Then she staggered, knocking into him again. “Sorry.”

“Ella. The reason you’re so dizzy is because you lost so much blood and the reason you lost so much blood is because you _took out the splinter_. Do you understand me?”

“Uh-huh.” She was nodding against his hip and he was willing to bet she’d tuned him out as soon as he’d started talking. “Can we go?”

Matt was about to agree—all he wanted was to get her home as fast as possible—but first he forced himself to focus on her wound. He couldn’t drag her around Hell’s Kitchen only for her to bleed out. She wasn’t a hemophiliac, but she was very small and the tear in her arm was very big.

“Wait, sweetheart,” he said reluctantly, tucking an unruly strand of hair behind her ear. He raised his voice. “Stone?”

Stone slunk closer to Matt and Ella. Behind him, Dex wiped at his face. “Yes?”

“You still carry sutures?” Matt asked.

“You still don’t?”

“What’s sutures,” Ella mumbled.

“Ella, c’mere. I need you to sit down for a second, all right?”

“Why?”

He wet his lips. “Because we need to take care of your arm, and I’m afraid a Band-Aid won’t do the trick.”

She made a confused sound, but didn’t protest. She came to sit in front of Matt, head leaning back against the tunnel wall. Matt knelt in front of her with Stone’s supplies while Stone hovered awkwardly over them like he wasn’t sure where he should be or what he should be doing.

Ripping open a packet of disinfectant wipes with his teeth, Matt pulled off his gloves and carefully wiped down the needle and sutures. “This is gonna hurt,” he warned quietly.

“That’s okay,” she said confidently. “I’ve had stitches before.”

Not without something for the pain, she hadn’t. Matt thought it best not to point that out. Carefully, carefully, he cleaned out the wound. Her little fist clenched. At the first puncture of the needle, she yelped and her other hand grabbed his arm, bunching his sleeve between her fingers.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said.

“Ow—ow—Matt, _ow!_ ”

“Shh, you’re being so brave.”

She let out a whimper between gritted teeth, muscles clenching under his hand. “Can I be done?”

“Not yet, I’m so sorry.” He wasn’t Claire or Maggie, and this wasn’t the kind of job he could rush. She was in pain now, but she’d hate to have the stitches taken out and put back in because he messed it up. Still, he concentrated on working as fast as he could without compromising the quality of the stitches.

(Behind them, Dex leaned forward as if watching closely.)

When Matt was done, Ella wiped quickly at the tears in her eyes and started to run her hand curiously over the stitches.

“Don’t touch it,” Matt and Stone said at the same time.

She jerked her hand away like she’d burned it.

Matt pulled his gloves back on. Her wrist was still inflamed. She needed ice. “We need to leave.”

She didn’t get up. “But Dex…”

“Dex will be fine. Stone will stay with him.”

She made a doubtful sound.

“Ella. Your wrist is sprained. And it’s…” He didn’t know what time it was, actually. “You need to sleep.”

Her mouth split into a yawn at his words. She tried to talk around it. “Not tired…”

Not bothering to argue, Matt set his hands on her waist and pulled her to her feet. Stone shrugged out of his jacket and handed it to Matt, who took it and swiftly bundled it around Ella.

“Hey!” She wriggled indignantly. “M’not cold.”

“Yes, you are,” Matt said. “You’re shivering.”

She heaved a dramatic sigh, but then she pulled the jacket more snugly around herself. “Smells like you,” she told Stone.

Apparently stunned by the comment, Stone didn’t answer.

“Let’s get you home,” Matt said quietly. Stone and Dex could sort out their differences, or at least keep from stabbing each other until Matt (or someone more qualified) was able to help them.

Ella tensed, and hesitated, but Matt just stood there, letting the line of his mouth tell her exactly how unlikely it was that she’d be able to barter. Finally, she nodded reluctantly and started trudging towards the passageway she’d taken to get here.

With a hand on her shoulder, Matt steered her toward a different tunnel, a straighter shot home.

“Bye, Dex,” she said.

Dex sounded surprised to have been remembered. “Uh…bye.”

Ella stayed close enough to occasionally bump into Matt as they walked. At one point, her cold hand brushed against his, insistent but not quite taking what she obviously wanted.

Matt curled his fingers around hers.

A fraction of her tension eased. “Matt?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think…when we get back, could we maybe not wake up my parents?”

He concentrated on listening for anything that might possibly cause trouble anywhere between their location and her home. “Well, they’re already awake.”

She froze again.

“Ella,” Matt said confusedly. “They called me. That’s how I knew you’d run away.”

“Oh,” she said very quietly. Her pace slackened, feet dragging.

Matt stopped. “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head.

“Ella.”

“I was just trying to help!” she said defiantly.

He slowly tilted his head.

She yanked her hand out of his. “I know I broke the rules, but I was trying to help Dex! And Stone! It’s not _fair_.”

“What’s not fair?”

Shoving her hands into the pockets of Stone’s oversized jacket, she didn’t answer.

She was probably just tired, and overwhelmed by everything that had happened tonight. This really wasn’t the time for a therapy session, and Matt wasn’t qualified anyway. “It’s all right,” he said, softening his voice. “Let’s just get you home.”

“Elizabeth wouldn’t’ve cared,” she burst out. “Kyle _definitely_ wouldn’t’ve.”

“Cared about what?” Matt asked carefully.

She sniffed loudly.

Maybe this was a conversation they needed to have after all. “Cared about what, Ella?”

“Running away,” she mumbled. “It’s—it’s not fair, ’cause I’m just trying to help.” Her chin jerked upwards. “And I _did_ help! I’m sorry you got hurt, but I helped Dex! It’s a stupid rule!”

“What rule?” Matt asked, bewildered.

She kicked at the ground. “All of them. It’s not my fault.”

Matt wasn’t sure if he was having trouble following her logic because she was too tired to make sense or he was too tired to understand. He mustered his patience. “What’s not your fault?”

She was quiet for a moment, like she had to work out the answer for herself first. “I shouldn’t get in trouble,” she said at last, somehow managing to sound both decisive and uncertain at the same time.

That wasn’t her call, and it certainly wasn’t Matt’s. “You shouldn’t get in trouble for what, exactly?”

“For finding Dex,” she said mutinously.

Matt’s eyes widened. “You mean for running away by yourself in the middle of the night and not telling anyone?”

She kicked at the ground again.

Matt listened to her mutter something incomprehensible. He suspected she knew as well as he did that, even if things had technically worked out, she’d made the wrong decision. She’d broken rules put in place for her own protection. But he understood that ranting about unfairness was probably easier than confronting the fact that she’d needlessly put herself in danger.

Well, she could rant at Matt all she wanted; it didn’t matter what Matt thought. Once she was home, her parents would be there to help her face up to what she’d done.

His job was just to bring her safely back to them.

 

 

Ella

She was tired and cold and her wrist hurt and so did her arm, and the stitches felt weird and itchy. It’d been a long time since she’d had stitches. She forgot how much she hated them.

But she couldn’t complain, not to Matt. She couldn’t stop looking at his side. His shirt was ripped and stained dark red. He acted like he couldn’t feel it and didn’t care, but he definitely wasn’t moving like he normally did.

Her fault, all her fault.

Suddenly, he stopped walking. Before she could ask what was going on, he pulled something out of his pocket. A clunky old phone. Buzzing.

Somehow, she _knew_ it was Dad. Her stomach shriveled up. “Don’t answer.”

Shooting her a disapproving look that just made her stomach shrivel up even more, Matt held the phone to his ear. “Micah, I have her. Yeah, she’s right here next to me. She got hurt, but I took care of her. Mostly. She should still see a doctor.”

Ella stared at her shoes. Dad was gonna be so, so angry.

“Well, she was…or do you want her to tell you herself?” Matt asked, shooting Ella another look. She wasn’t sure what that one meant. “Cool. I’ll get her home. All right. Take care.” He slipped his phone into his pocket and held out his hand.

Ella stared at it uncertainly, like refusing to take it could possibly keep him from just scooping her up and dragging her home anyway.

“Ella,” he said softly.

“I’m in so much trouble,” she blurted out.

“Uh, yeah,” he said. “C’mon.” He wiggled his fingers.

She stuffed her hands in her pockets.

Lowering his hand, he tipped his head the other direction. “You remember what happened last time you run away? When we found each other in the tunnels?” He frowned for a second. “That _was_ the last time you ran away, right?”

Well, she’d kind of gotten in trouble at school for climbing the playground fence, but she didn’t think that was worth mentioning—because she hadn’t even gotten that far and because it was running away from school, not home, and because the only reason she’d tried to climb the fence was because she wanted to see if she could climb it as fast as Matt probably could and Matt would definitely not be happy to hear that.

“Yes, that was the last time,” she said.

“Ella,” he sighed. When she didn’t say anything else, he sighed again and crouched down, wincing a little, until they were at the same level. Actually, she was maybe little tiny bit taller than him this way, now. “The point is, remember how scared you were when I brought you back home from the tunnels? Did you get in trouble then?”

“No,” she admitted slowly. “But that’s different.”

He raised his eyebrows. “How?”

“I was…” She bit her lip. “I was new.”

After she said it, she realized that probably didn’t explain very much.

But Matt was nodding slowly. He got it. Of course _he_ got it. “The way Micah and Maeva feel about you isn’t something that’ll wear off after enough time. And if you do get in trouble, it’s not because they want to hurt you. It’s because they want you to be safe. Which is because they love you.”

She didn’t think he was wrong about that, actually. She just didn’t want to deal with all this. She knew what it was like when she disobeyed them and she didn’t want to see the disappointment in Mom's face or the way Dad always looked so sad, and almost like he was in pain.

Not like she could avoid it forever, but maybe she could just…wait a bit before going home.

At her silence, Matt finally shifted until he was sitting on his butt, legs crossed. Then, with the tiniest smirk, he took her lightly by her uninjured arm and tugged her down into his lap, spinning her around at the last second so her back was against his chest.

“Hey!” she yelped.

Too late; he wrapped his arms around her and dropped his chin onto her shoulder. “Talk to me.”

“I thought you wanted to take me home,” she argued.

“Oh, that’s happening tonight no matter what. But I’m thinking now that this conversation is more important. So, talk to me.”

“Nothing to talk about,” she grumbled.

“No, talk to me about why you don’t wanna go home to your parents when you know how much they love you.”

She sighed loudly, hoping he’d get the point.

If he did, he ignored it. “If you’re worried about getting in trouble, are you…worried about what they’ll do to punish you?”

“I know they won’t _hurt_ me,” she explained immediately. “But they’re gonna be…upset.”

“Upset how?”                                                      

She bit her lip, not wanting to be more specific. But Matt kept waiting. She wriggled a little and was relieved when he loosened his grip enough that she could slide out of his lap and sit facing him on the cold sidewalk. She needed to see his face.

 _He_ didn’t look upset, even though he’d had to run around at night looking for her and even though he’d gotten stabbed.

“Sad,” she admitted at last. “Kind of…disappointed. Because I knew better, Matt.”

He nodded. “You messed up. But that’s no reason not to go home.”

Picking up a pebble from the sidewalk, she rolled it between her fingers. They probably looked so stupid. Daredevil and a kid sitting crisscross-applesauce in the middle of a sidewalk at night, just talking.

“Ella,” he said eventually, “do you think your parents don’t know you ran away?”

“No,” she muttered.

“So if they’re gonna be disappointed, aren’t they already disappointed?”

It was one thing to know you’d disappointed someone; it was another to see it. She didn’t answer.

“Do you think they’d be more disappointed in you for coming home instead of saying out here?”

She bit back the words, _don’t be stupid_. “No.”

He raised his eyebrows. “So…?”

“Matt,” she said plaintively. He was right, she knew he was right. He was making sense. But that did absolutely nothing to change how she much she didn’t want to see their faces.

Matt pursed his lips like he was thinking fast. “You know,” he said finally, “I have a priest. He’s good at giving advice and, well, helping me work through stuff. If he were here right now, he’d probably say you should fall back on what you know about your parents. What you know is true.” He paused, like she was supposed to know what that meant. When she didn’t say anything, he prompted her, “So…what do you like most about Maeva?”

“Lots of things,” Ella said suspiciously. He was obviously trying to push her in a certain direction but couldn’t figure out where.

“Give me an example.”

“Ummmm…she’s nice.”

“Specifics, Ella,” he encouraged. “At times like this, you need specific things that are true to remember and hold onto. Not just feelings, because they won’t last. And not just words or promises. Trust me.”

She frowned.

“It’s like…my friend. Foggy.”

She brightened. She missed hanging out with him as much as she used to, but he was okay again, and that was the most important thing.

“When Foggy and I first met,” Matt began, speaking slowly like he had to figure out what he was trying to say in his own head first, “he had this…giant personality, and he wanted to be my friend, and he’d say all this stuff about how we were, I don’t know, always gonna be there for each other. And I didn’t know how to believe him, back then. I wasn’t sure I even _wanted_ to believe him, because that would make it so much more disappointing if…”

“If he was just like everyone else?” she suggested.

He smiled sadly. “Yeah, pretty much. But as time went on, he kept backing up what he said. He _was_ there for me. In big ways and also in really small, stupid ways. Like, he kept the room clean for me because he didn't want me to trip, and once he bought me this fuzzy stress ball because he thought I could use it, and he’d go yell at the registrar’s office when they wouldn’t accommodate my blindness—”

“What’s the registrar’s office?”

“It’s a…it’s a thing, Ella, ask your dad. He works at a college. Anyway.” Matt gave his head a small shake. “Foggy would always check in with me, and do things for me even when it inconvenienced him, and he never acted like I was different or broken because I can’t see or…or because I didn’t have parents at Christmas, and no matter what I’ve done to him he’s always come back…” He blinked and sniffed loudly. “What I’m trying to say is, now even if things are hard between us, I can remember all those other things about him and tell myself that this time…”

This time would be different, this time Foggy wouldn’t be like everybody else. She got it. She nodded.

“So, Maeva?” Matt prompted.

“She pays attention to me,” Ella offered. “And…she knows things about me.”

Matt looked a bit thrown by that. “What?”

Ella ran her fingers over a weird snag in his pants, right above the knee. “Like, if I’m playing, she’ll be there. Even if she’s not playing with me. She stays close all the time.” Her old mom never did that, not that Ella could remember. “And she can tell what I’m feeling, like if I’m upset, even when I don’t want _anyone_ to be able to tell.”

Matt kind of hummed in response; she felt the vibrations all the way up her back. “Yeah, that sounds like she pays attention. Why do you think she does that?”

“So I don’t get in trouble,” Ella said promptly, but no, that was only part of it, wasn’t it? “And because…she loves me.”

“Yeah,” Matt said softly. “I think so.” He shifted a little, maybe because his foot was falling asleep or something, and she tried to get up so they could get going but he put his hand on her arm, rubbing his thumb up and down and keeping her in place. “What about Micah?”

“He, um…” There was a string loose on his pants. She rubbed it between her fingers. “I know he loves me too, but…”

“Specifics,” Matt reminded her.

There were about a million she could think of, once she tried to think. “He talks to me like you do,” she blurted out.

Matt paused. “What?”

“Like…like I’m not a little kid. He talks to me and asks me questions and really _listens_.” Her old dad never did that. _Never_. “And he snuggles me whenever we’re watching a movie, and he makes sure we can do things by ourselves sometimes, just him and me, like get ice cream or something so he can talk to me more. He calls it a date.” She giggled. “I know it’s not a real date, but he says it’s practice. So I can have _high_ _standards_.”

Matt made a sound like he was trying not to laugh. “You should have really high standards for dates, I agree.”

She was on a roll now. “And sometimes he wakes up _really early_ and goes and gets donuts so I can have them before school even though Mom thinks it’s not good to have donuts for breakfast, and…” She trailed off, wondering if she could explain how his face got sometimes, when she was talking to him and it was like nothing else in the world mattered to him except whatever she was saying.

“You see?” Matt asked gently.

He was right. And now she _did_ want to go home. Even if she did get in trouble. She stood up. “Can you take me back, now?”

He grinned. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

 

 

Her feet were dragging by the time they reached her neighborhood with all the familiar houses. Her head kind of spun, too, and she was cold even in Stone’s jacket. She just wanted to sleep. She had to stare at the sidewalk to keep from tripping.

“Ella.” Matt nudged her. “Look.”

She lifted her head and her throat tightened up.

Dad was standing at the very edge of the porchlight. He was in his _pajamas_ , not even wearing a jacket. It didn’t even look like he was wearing _shoes_.

Ella instinctively tried to slow down, to put off whatever might be about to happen, but Matt’s hand flat on her back pushed her forward. She heard him take a deep breath to call out.

He didn’t need to, though. Dad had seen them, and he’d already started running.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So many emotionally repressed characters all in a room, three-fourths of them injured (and yes I originally said two-thirds because I'm a law student who can't do math, don't tell my engineer brother). Classic.


	54. Look at All the Angels Watching You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Little Light" by Matt Hammond and Audrey Assad (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uckzhncKAs). Up to you to decide whether the title is ironic.
> 
> LOOK. This chapter is really long (and kinda mess tbh) and also the chapter count jumped again but it’s. Not. My. Fault. (okay the chapter being a bit of a mess is mostly my fault, I just, ugh, couldn't fix it) Here’s the deal: I had this certain ending sketched out, and all the plot points were aligned, and I was gonna just zip along to the end…and then you people kept commenting things and it just threw everything off because you’re all RIGHT, darnit, you and your ideas. So yeah, this is your fault, people. I hope you’re happy.

Micah

She was so cold when he picked her up, but the part that worried him the most was how quiet she was. “Let’s get you inside,” he murmured. She just shivered, wrapped in a jacket he didn’t recognize, so he started carrying her towards the house only to stop when he didn’t hear Matt’s footsteps behind them. He turned around and opened his mouth.

Matt’s head twitched like he was startled, or like he’d forgotten something. “Sorry, sorry, I’m coming.” He stepped forward under a dim, orange streetlight.

Micah’s eyes widened. Matt’s side glistened. “You’re bleeding.”

Matt flashed him a flimsy grin. “Not too bad.”

This night just got even more complicated. “Get inside, come on.” He made Matt go in first, half afraid that the vigilante would bolt if Micah turned his back. And sure enough, Matt looked vaguely uncomfortable standing in the hallway, shifting his weight. He must have sensed Micah’s determination because he reluctantly tugged off his mask, revealing tired eyes.

Maeva emerged from the living room where she’d fallen asleep on the couch. She glanced between Ella and Matt, bit her lip, and snapped into action: grabbing Matt’s arm on his uninjured side and tugging him into the kitchen. (Matt let her drag him without complaint.)

Micah followed, setting Ella down gingerly on the edge of the counter and running his hands over her face.

“Just her arm and her wrist,” Matt said without turning his head.

Micah couldn’t quite stop himself from trying to inspect the rest of her anyway.

“Daddy,” she started to say.

“It’s all right.” He accepted the ice pack Maeva handed him and held it firmly to Ella’s wrist. Maeva dug their first aid kit out of the pantry, a kit that, between Ella and Matt, suddenly seemed depressingly inadequate. Taking a deep breath, Micah focused on keeping the ice applied to Ella’s wrist, smoothing her tangled hair out of her face with his other hand. Something warm washed through him when she leaned into his touch.

Maeva deposited the kit on the counter next to Ella, then turned to look at Matt, who was sagging against the wall with his eyes aimed listlessly at the ceiling. “What do you need?”

“Uh…” He looked like he wasn’t actually sure why he was still there.

“Stitches?” Maeva asked uncertainly, peering into the kit.

“Well…”

She thrust some supplies at him. He took them, and his eyes flickered over to Ella, clearly debating whether he should leave now.

“I’m sorry,” Maeva was saying. “None of us know how to put them in. We could learn, though.”

“YouTube,” Micah agreed swiftly, before Matt could object.

“Practice on raw meat or something, isn’t that what people do?”

Matt blinked, but under the steady stream of their voices he’d limped over to sit at the table, unsticking his shirt from his side to inspect the area with his fingers. “I don’t really think most people do that, actually.”

“Well, then they’re missing out,” Maeva declared.

“Irresponsible,” Micah added.

“They’ll be completely unprepared for the coming apocalypse.”

Ella blinked sleepily. “What’s a pocolips?”

“It’s a story where the world ends,” Micah explained.

“Oh.” She looked confused, but didn’t press for more details, for which he was thankful.

Matt, meanwhile, was smiling hesitantly at their conversation, creating an odd juxtaposition with the way that he was now threading a bloody needle through his bloodier skin. Micah frowned, glancing between the injured vigilante and his injured daughter and wondering again if he could ever have possibly foreseen this.

Half an hour later, Matt finally slipped back out into the night (with a fresh bottle of Gatorade that Maeva pushed into his hands), and Maeva kissed Ella’s forehead and told her they’d need to talk in the morning. There was a plan, see. They needed to hear Ella’s story before they decided exactly how to respond, but Micah and Maeva had already agreed that tonight everyone involved would be too exhausted to have a healthy conversation. Someone would end up crying. Micah was only half-joking when he suggested it might be him.

“You two coming?” Maeva asked, pausing on the way to the stairs.

“Yeah, I got her.” He beckoned with his finger and Maeva came in close for a goodnight kiss. Beneath them, Ella looked torn between disgust and delight. Then Maeva disappeared up the stairs.

Setting the half-melted ice pack aside, Micah turned to meet his little girl’s eyes. “Ready for bed?”

“Daddy…” Her lower lip wobbled. “I’m really sorry.”

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow, remember?”

“But I—I—I lost my flashlight,” she blurted out.

Micah very carefully did not laugh. “We’ll worry about that tomorrow. C’mon.” He tried to pick her up again.

She scooted backwards on the counter. “It’s not fair! You let me help Matt, you let me testify for him and everything.”

Micah sighed. “We did that _together_. We talked to Marci _together_ and you worked out what to say with Matt, and your mother and I were there at the courthouse with you.” He rubbed at his forehead. “Ella, buttercup, we want you to help people. We’re so proud that _you_ want to help people. But you have to do it safely. And right now, you really have to go to sleep.”

Her eyes watered.

He’d called it.

“Daddy…” Her voice trailed off.

“It’s all right. Come on.” He reached for the jacket and slowly peeled it off, getting her one step closer towards pajamas.

And then he saw it. Her sleeve soaked with drying blood.

He made a strangled noise and gently, gently rolled her sleeve back to reveal tiny black marks in her brown skin.

“It’s okay,” she said quickly. “I’m not even as hurt as Matt was, so it’s—”

“ _Don’t_ say that,” he snapped.

The tears spilled out. “I’m really, really sorry, I’m sorry—”

“Shh. It’s okay. We’re okay.” He pressed his mouth to her forehead, forcibly swallowing back the words rising in his throat. Why hadn’t she come to him? What had he done—or not done—that made her think she had to handle this on her own?

Didn’t she trust him?

 

 

Stone

He hadn’t expected Dex to agree to go back to his apartment. But he had. The trek home—it wasn’t home, not really—was wordless. They avoided the cops and anyone who might recognize Dex (which was everyone) and returned without incident. Dex sank down onto the bed, rubbing at his forehead, looking out-of-place on the nicer sheets that Matty had bought so long ago. Stone retreated to the spindly chair in the opposite corner.

He sent Matty a text: _Is she home safe?_

Matty responded straight away: _Safe and sound._

With a sigh, Stone set his phone aside, paying no attention to it when it buzzed again. He ran his hand through his hair.

He closed his eyes, remembering another time in those same tunnels. That time, Ella had run off into the night determined to help Matty.

Matty’s voice rang in his ears. _I’m not worth that!_

This time, she’d gotten hurt. She should’ve been asleep in her own bed. Instead, she’d needed _stitches_ , which she’d received not in a hospital but in an underground tunnel only a few meters away from a dead body.

And why?

Because she’d wanted to help Stone.

He pressed the pads of his fingers against his eyelids. It did nothing to halt the stream of accusations in his head.

Perhaps…perhaps Matty didn’t think that way anymore. He’d talked about no longer fearing that he lived on the cusp of disappointing the people he loved. He’d talked about no longer needing to make up for past mistakes. Fine. Excellent. Matty certainly deserved that. He made mistakes, yes, but those mistakes mostly fell back on himself. In the meantime, look how he poured himself out for the sake of those he loved—and not only those he loved, but the entirety of the city! Look what he sacrificed, without a word of complaint!

But Stone? His one attempt at helping someone else resulted in a seven-year-old girl with a sprained wrist and in need of stitches. Not to mention Matty himself had been injured trying to fix Stone’s mistakes. And he’d ruined whatever feeble trust he’d built between himself and Dex. Yes, Dex might have come back with Stone for now, but Stone knew better than to think that meant anything. Dex simply didn’t have anywhere else to go, or anyone else to care.

“Stone?”

Speak of the devil. Stone looked up to see Dex still on the bed, shoulders hunched up almost to his ears. “What?”

“How long are we gonna stay here?”

What, in this apartment? On this planet? Together? What? Stone shrugged.

Dex picked distractedly at the sheets. “Stone?”

“ _What?_ ”

Dex’s jaw tightened at his tone of voice. “Matt doesn’t kill people.”

What did that have to do with anything? “Correct. And?”

“But you killed Madam Gao.”

Oh.

“But you’ve helped me more than he has.”

Stone was about to argue when he realized what Dex just said. “You think I’ve helped you?”

Dex sighed. “How would I know?”

Stone winced internally, though he was confident he remained expressionless.

Dex gave his head a sharp shake, as if clearing water from his ears. “I don’t get it.”

Neither of them did.

 

 

Micah

Ella was grounded. Unfortunately, grounding Ella felt about as much like a punishment to Micah and Maeva as it did to her. No, not in a sappy, Hallmark, this-is-hurting-me-more-than-it’s-hurting-you kind of way. It was just that Ella did not take kindly to being bored.

But after the story she told about why she ran away, Micah would willingly put up with all her whining and excessive noise around the house if it meant that at least she’d be safe behind a locked door.

He knew who Ben Poindexter was, of course. Everyone did. But Micah knew him not only from the news about the fake Daredevil but also because Dex was, according to Matt, the one who worked with Vanessa Fisk to have Ella drugged with devil’s hell. And yet she’d gone after him. Why?

Because she’d “wanted to help.”

He’d always hated the idea of helicopter parents. But what Ella needed was a whole fleet of helicopters.

But at least for now she was grounded, and she was obeying the rules, and Micah could actually sleep at night knowing she was safe in the house.

That’s what he thought, anyway, until Matt texted a few days later to ask tersely if they could talk. Probably because Matt had finally found a way to make the whole running-away thing out to be his fault. They agreed to meet at an obscure coffee shop midway between their workplaces during Micah’s lunch break—as his own boss, Matt could take a lunch as needed; Micah was only slightly jealous.

Then Matt walked through the door and a rock dropped into Micah’s stomach at the sight of him. He’d seen Matt this pale only once before: standing in the basement of his church while Ella writhed from the effects of the hallucinogenic drug. Micah got up from the table as Matt came to a stop in front of him. “What happened?”

Matt’s glasses glinted coldly, but then he wet his lips and slid them from his face, revealing brown eyes hollow and despairing and guilty. “I heard…I heard them say her name.”

“Who?” Micah demanded.

“I…I don’t know, exactly. Can’t track them all.” A muscle twitched in his jaw, signifying that he’d tried.

It clicked, then. People at night, the kind of people Matt fought every night. Robbers and murderers and…and worse, much worse.

“It’s not the first time,” Matt admitted, “but now it’s…”

“What did they say?”

Matt pressed his lips into a thin line. “They want her to pay.”

Micah swallowed. “When?”

“They didn’t say.”

“Okay. All right.” Micah ran his hand over his head. “We have family in California, and we’ve been promising Ella a Disneyland trip…we can stay there.”

After some hesitation, Matt nodded.

“It’s almost winter break,” Micah swept on, brain spinning, “so she won’t miss too much school, unless…” He trailed off as reality sank in. “How long?”

“What?”

“Could we ever come _back?_ Will these people move on? Would they follow us to California? How extensive is this threat we’re talking about?”

The vigilante helplessly averted his sightless eyes. “I don’t know.”

Micah exhaled slowly, struggling to keep calm. His little girl was in danger— _again_. And now it was his fault. Matt had been explicitly clear about the danger she’d face if she testified, and Micah had been so focused on his own personal goal of giving her different ways to help people that he’d cavalierly ignored reality. He cursed aloud through gritted teeth.

Eyes still aimed downwards, Matt did not respond.

Micah stepped back, feeling suddenly claustrophobic. “Okay. What—what do you think we should do?”

“Me?” Matt sounded startled.

“This is _your_ world,” Micah pointed out, an edge of bitterness in his voice despite his best efforts.

The muscle twitched in Matt’s jaw again. “Right.”

Micah waited, but Matt said nothing else. “So?” Micah pressed at last.

“You, uh…you said once,” Matt began slowly, carefully, voice lowered, “that it…that it would be wrong for me to believe that Ella is better off without me, and you said that once someone makes the connection between us, I can’t keep her safe by pulling away.” The hand holding his glasses tightened into a fist. “Do you still feel that way?”

No, he didn’t _feel_ that way. He felt like punching someone, including himself and including Matt. (Matt tensed almost imperceptibly, as though he’d somehow picked up on Micah’s rush of emotion.) But Micah still _believed_ that way. He waited until whatever physiological signals he was sending calmed down, waited until he could say clearly and honestly: “Yes.”

The panic on Matt’s face faded somewhat. “In that case, the, uh…yes, leaving the state would be safer, and I’ll try to find out about a timeline. But if this doesn’t blow over, or if I can’t figure out _when_ this might blow over…the safest place she could be is close to me.”

“I agree,” Micah said immediately.

Now relief washed over Matt’s face. “I’ll stay close. I also have…friends…who can help.”

“Peter?” Micah asked, not sure how he felt about exposing another minor to the danger…although he had no doubt that Peter would leap at the chance (literally) to face that danger. “Shouldn’t we just call the cops?”

“You should,” Matt said slowly, “but they won’t be enough.” If the NYPD put a detail on Ella’s house, that would be, what, two cops? Maybe four? The men coming to kill Ella would tear right through them. “I have others who can help as well. Jessica Jones, for one.”

“I’ve heard of her. People call her a hero.”

“She is. And, uh…my friend Stone.” Matt sounded suddenly furtive. “He’s the one she was trying to help.”

“I thought she was trying to help…Poindexter.” It still felt bizarre to say that out loud.

Matt inclined his head slightly. “She was trying to help both of them. But Stone, he, uh, received similar training to my own. He’s actually…he’s actually helped Ella before. When she ran away after my first trial, and he was the one who stopped the assassin Fisk sent while she was at her grandmother’s.”

“Oh,” Micah said dumbly.

The furtiveness turned to something resembling awkwardness. “He’s also, you know, just…stayed close to your house. For her protection. Like, uh…on your roof.”

“Ah,” Micah said faintly.

Matt rushed on. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about him, I should have, but it just—he’ll protect her, and I think she trusts him, and we’ll need all the help we can get…”

If Spiderman hadn’t become a regular dinner guest at his home, Micah would maybe be more bothered by this.

“And, well, also…” Matt smiled nervously, head tilting to make sure no one was within earshot. “Karen’s been staying with Frank Castle, who—”

“Don’t say whatever you’re about to say,” Micah blurted out, because _no_ , absolutely not.

“Micah.” Matt cleared his throat. “Frank Castle was an honorable soldier who only snapped psychologically because his family was slaughtered right in front of him. If he can do anything to keep _your_ family together, he’ll do it. And he’s not a threat to children, only the people who want to hurt them.”

That was a nice story (it wasn’t), but didn’t change the fact that Castle once brought a _shotgun_ to a hospital.

Matt lowered his voice even more. “Criminals are even more scared of him than they are of me. Especially…” A muscle flashed in his jaw. “Especially after the trial.”

Why? Why would that—oh. Micah had gotten so used to the reality that the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen was blind; he’d forgotten what a revelation it would be to Matt’s enemies.

Matt’s eyes narrowed in response to whatever he was picking up from Micah. He swept on pointedly. “If they hear that the Punisher is guarding your home, they might leave you alone not just for now but indefinitely.”

“Yeah, all right, makes sense,” Micah muttered. Didn’t mean he was happy about it.

Matt opened his mouth, then closed it.

“What?”

“Well, I—just—” he stammered. “I was about to suggest that…that we consider one more person. But I’m thinking you won’t want to.”

“Who?”

Looking like he was already rethinking this, Matt stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Ben Poindexter,” he mumbled.

“ _What?_ ”

“He’s been staying with Stone, recently, and—”

“Isn’t he supposed to be in jail?”

“Stone’s been helping him get—get better, and he’s been talking to my mom, sometimes—”

“Your mom the nun,” Micah clarified, bewildered.

“Yeah, so…so Dex still isn’t, y’know, _stable_ , but he’s also better, and he’s…effective,” he finished weakly.

That was exactly what Micah was afraid of.

 

 

Matt

It went like this: Matt reached out to Peter and Jessica, asking if they’d be willing to stick closer to the Valliers’ house. Peter was enthusiastic and Ella (grounded, apparently) was thrilled to have him around. Jessica was more standoffish, but she’d met Ella and apparently couldn’t resist her. Matt also asked Stone to keep an ear out, and Stone was the one to report a specific date.

At first, Matt wasn’t sure what made that day special. But when he woke up that morning, freezing cold even with Karen squished beside him, he found that all the utilities in his apartment had been shut off. When they tried to call the company to ask about it, they found that both their cell phones had been disconnected. It would’ve kept him distracted the entire day and would’ve given Micah and Maeva no chance to contact him, except for the fact that his burner still functioned.

Still, he doubted the low-level criminals going after Ella had been able to pull all this off.

“What makes you think they’re low-level?” Karen asked pointedly, throwing both of their stuff into suitcases.

“It’s Fisk. It has to be.” The scheming, the machinations. Going after a child just to punish Matt. This was exactly what Fisk would do. “How hard can it be for him to contact someone who can contact someone who can make all this happen?”

“Well, the important thing is that it won’t work.” She pressed his burner into his hands.

Matt wasn’t ignorant of the fact that the only reason Fisk’s plan _wouldn’t_ work was because of the people in his life. People he could rely on. Karen was taking her gun and going to Foggy and Marci’s place, where she’d enjoy heated rooms and running water and they’d enjoy extra protection. Just in case. Matt, meanwhile, was going straight to Ella’s place and ignoring the apartment’s problems because, thanks to Stone’s intel, he could recognize them for the diversion they were. He kissed Karen.

“Keep them safe,” they told each other at the same time.

 

 

Peter and Jessica were both already at the Valliers’ place when Matt got there, standing around in the backyard—he in his costume, judging by the smell, complete with the mask; she in her trademark leather jacket and boots, judging by the sound (and, well, also the smell). Peter was quiet, which Matt took to mean he’d already tried making friends with Jessica and failed. The kid brightened when he saw Matt, though.

“Hey!” He scampered over like an overzealous puppy. “You ready? These guys aren’t gonna know what hit them. Is it bad that I’m excited?”

Not really. Matt felt no small amount of anticipation at showing the incoming criminals just how protected Ella was. Maybe it was overkill to call in four extra vigilantes when the criminals weren’t expecting to face any threat at all. But he couldn’t really bring himself to feel bad over it.

About half an hour later, Stone and Dex arrived. It’d taken some finagling to get Micah and Maeva to agree to have Dex nearby, but persuading people to overlook someone else’s faults was one of Matt’s strengths as a defense attorney. (He also overheard Ella championing the cause—insisting that Dex needed this, Dex wanted to help her back, Dex wanted to be with his friends—which definitely didn’t hurt his case.)

The blinds were pulled on the house, and inside Matt could hear Micah and Maeva finally sitting Ella down and explaining what was happening, why she couldn’t go outside and why, in fact, she’d have to stay up in her room with the door locked today. Just in case.

Matt felt a stab of unease. Maybe they should’ve sent them away, at least to a hotel. But if Fisk really was behind this, Matt couldn’t be sure that their hideout wouldn’t go unnoticed. At least this way, Ella was literally surrounded by people ready to fight for her. The men coming after her today were dangerous, yes. But they were also the people Matt defended very night. This was, in fact, safer.

Right?

He pulled his attention away from the house to realize that Jessica, Peter, Stone, and Dex were all standing around him in an awkwardly-shaped half-circle. Waiting for something.

Oh, waiting for Matt to tell them what to do.

Great.

Matt wasn’t big on team-ups, was the thing. Not to say he couldn’t appreciate them, not to say he didn’t appreciate their utility. Especially now. But Stick thought he should’ve been a leader, probably some kind of _general_ sending the soldiers into battle, and…no.

He cleared his throat. “The goals are simple. Keep everyone away from the house, make them too terrified to ever try this again, and keep any stragglers behind for the cops.” He dropped his hand on Peter’s shoulder. “What are our positions, kid?”

Peter jumped. “Who, me?”

“Yeah you. Don’t think I didn’t notice all the thought you put into how to maximize strengths and minimize vulnerabilities the other night.”

“You mean…when we were playing D&D?”

Jessica let out a choking laughing sound. “Sorry, _what?_ ”

Matt just raised his eyebrows at Peter, expectant.

“Uh, okay.” Peter started throwing one of his webbing balls back and forth between his hands. His head turned. Assessing. “Matt, you should start off out in the neighborhood. You can sneak around and take out the bad guys before they even get close.”

Matt nodded, and then took a split second to be surprised at the fact that he was comfortable enough with his allies to entrust Ella to them while he was further away.

Peter tilted his head. “Stone, you have senses like Matt’s, right? So you should go with him.”

There was a smile in Stone’s voice when he said, “Consider it done.”

“And, uh…” Peter’s voice went a bit higher than usual as he addressed Dex. “Mr. Poindexter, you should stick close to the house.”

Yeah, no. Matt wanted Dex as far away from Ella as possible. “Dex should stretch the perimeter,” he interjected.

“If he’s better at ranged attacks, we should put him up high so he can do more damage,” Peter pointed out.

“I want Dex at the perimeter,” Matt said flatly.

“Figures,” Dex muttered under his breath.

Peter’s head swiveled between Matt and Dex. “Oh. Oh, okay. Sure. I’ll stay back here, then, with, um, Ms. J—”

“Don’t,” Jessica said.

“With Jessica,” Peter corrected himself. “I’ll take the roof and use my webbing to stop anyone who gets close, and you can, y’know—”

“Punch their faces in?” she asked dryly.

“Good,” Matt jumped in before she could insult him. “I’ll stay at the house just long enough to tell Micah when it’s starting. Stone, Dex, go ahead and take your positions.”

“You like the positions?” Peter whispered.

Matt flashed him a grin. “You’re quite the tactician.”

“All this from a boardgame twelve-year-old boys play in their mom’s basement,” Jessica muttered.

“Where else are twelve-year-old kids supposed to play?” Peter retorted. “Walmart?”

Maybe Jessica and Peter shouldn’t be left alone by the house. Or maybe they’d grow to love each other after this. Stranger things had happened.

Everyone split up; Stone and Dex ventured off into the neighborhood, taking care to avoid any neighbors; Matt noted with satisfaction that they apeared to have returned mostly to their old dynamic. Jessica lurked under the tree in the Valliers’ front lawn, doing something with her phone. Matt sat with Peter on the roof.

Behind and below him, the backyard swing creaked ominously. Strange that he knew for a fact that men were coming to try to kill Ella, and yet…he wasn’t nervous.

After about an hour, Matt’s burner buzzed. A text from Stone.

“Incoming,” Peter read aloud.

Matt dropped down off the roof, rapping on the back door. Micah opened it holding…a long kitchen knife. Huh. “Call the police,” Matt said quietly. In about eight minutes, cops would show up with sirens and any lingering enemies would be forced to flee.

Micah went still. “It’s happening?”

“Just keep her in the house. You’ll be fine.”

“Wait!” Micah’s hand darted out and caught Matt’s sleeve before he could leave.

“What?”

Micah swallowed. “Call the Punisher.”

 

 

Jessica

She wanted more people to punch. These goons thought they could target a little girl? Cowards. Stupid, cruel cowards.

But only a few bad guys were making it past the perimeter, and it was ridiculously easy to take them out after Peter shot webbing in their eyes. Jessica took a moment to squint into the distance, watching Matt take down his enemies. He’d given up sticking to the shadows in favor of fighting as many people as he could, dodging the occasional bullet while he was at it. Five at once was his record so far.

It was actually kind of amazing.

And Jessica was effective, all right? No need to be showy beyond what it took to knock the guys down. Which was why she tended to roll her eyes at the fancy gymnastics Matt and Danny liked to employ.

Except this was different. This was brutally efficient. She hadn’t realized the human body could _move_ the way his was moving right now. No wonder no one was getting past him.

But then, without warning, Matt made a sound she’d never, ever heard him make before: a _yelp_ that echoed all the way back to Jessica. His silhouette dropped to his _knees_ , and that was all it took for Jessica to jump-fly towards him. She barely got there in time to yank the bad guy off him before he ended up with a knife through the heart. She threw the guy over her shoulder and stopped worrying about him when she heard the resulting, ringing _thud_ like he’d hit something metal and unyielding. A light poll, maybe. Whatever, right now Matt had all her attention.

He was bent over himself, chest against his knees with his forehead pushing against the ground, and he’d clapped his hands over his ears, pressing so hard she was surprised he hadn’t split his own skull open. He was also bleeding from his side. A lot.

“Matt?” she asked stupidly, crouching beside him and catching a glimpse of his white-teethed grimace. He didn’t respond except for a moan that he didn’t bite in time.

“It’s that sound,” someone said over them. She looked up to see the other ninja guy. Italian, based on her investigation. His face was twisted up in pain, but _he_ wasn’t trying to compress his own head with his hands. Right, he could hear further thanks to the same fancy training Matt got, but he hadn’t gotten a dose of radiation. She glanced over her shoulder to see the spider-kid stumbling slightly on the roof. Because _he’d_ gotten enhanced hearing without the special training. But because life hated him, Matt Murdock had gotten both.

All of that was why Jessica didn’t dumbly ask, “What sound?” even though she couldn’t hear a thing. Instead, she asked, “Which way?”

Stone pointed. “Two blocks, maybe three. I don’t…” He winced, gave his head a sharp shake. “I don’t know what it is.”

“I’ll take care of it.” She didn’t look at Matt again; it was bad enough seeing him like that once already. She just took off, pushing harder off the ground until she was practically flying.

And sure enough, she found Stone’s guy about two blocks away holding some kind of black remote. The idiots planned well enough to bring him, but not well enough to leave anyone to guard him. Then again, if Matt had been the only person with the Valliers, the guy wouldn’t’ve needed any protection.

Instead, Jessica landed right in front of his face and knocked him out cold with one strike. Then she picked up the remote.

 

 

Stone

The sound screeched through Stone’s ears, and it was torture, but at least he wasn’t on the ground. As for Matty, it wasn’t like he could’ve _forgotten_ they were in the middle of a war zone, so it wasn’t like he was staying hunched in a ball because he wanted to. He was, in fact, that vulnerable.

And because he’d testified about his abilities as well as his disability, everyone around them knew it.

Stone planted himself in front of him, but the criminals were on all sides and Stone knew exactly what Stick would say about this situation: Stone was supposed to be protecting Ella; Matty was supposed to take care of himself. Ella was the priority; Ella was the _mission_. If Matty couldn’t handle it, Stone should leave him behind.

Well, things were no longer that simple, Stick. They hadn’t been for a long time.

Stone lashed out with his sword to ward someone off, and simultaneously heard a sound from behind. He turned too late; he stabbed with his sword but already knew the blade wouldn’t thwart the attack in time.

But then there was a _bang_ , muted under the ceaseless noise, and the man’s body jerked. Blood soaked his shirt from a brand new hole in his abdomen. Stone shoved the man backwards and turned, raising his sword, to see a vaguely familiar silhouette crouched on a neighbor’s roof.

Frank Castle.

Stone couldn’t be sure, but he thought Castle gave him a polite nod.

A moment later, the shrill ringing cut off. Stone shook his head to clear it, but the sound still reverberated in his head. “Matty, c’mon.”

Matty had lifted his head when the sound disappeared, peeling his lips back from his teeth, but he didn’t react at all to Stone.

“Get up, Matty. Get _up_.”

Still no reaction.

Pushing back growing horror, Stone nudged Matty with his knee. _That_ got a reaction—Matty twisted around and struck out with his fist. Stone dodged, used his knife to sideswipe a brave criminal trying to take advantage of their distraction, and crouched next to Matty. “C’mon, you know it’s me. You can _smell_ me.”

Well, smell him as well as all the blood and metal and the sour tang of the criminals’ sweat. So in truth, Stone couldn’t blame him for lashing out. Taking a risk, Stone grabbed Matty’s hand in a vicelike grip and brought the hand to his own face. “It’s me, Matty. It’s just me.”

Matty’s fingers fanned over Stone’s face. He gave a short, sharp nod.

“Get up, then.” Still holding his hand, Stone stood, hauling him to his feet.

Matty almost fell into Stone. He flinched at nothing. “Loud,” he said—loudly.

“Believe me, I know.” He wouldn’t do much good out here anymore, not until his hearing recovered enough to extend across the yard. He’d be more effective in the closer quarters of the home, where he only had to deal with whatever was right in front of him. “Follow me.”

 

 

Matt

His head hurt so bad, he thought he was gonna be sick. He stumbled, knocking into the side of the house. Stone made an irritated sound; Matt couldn’t concentrate enough to figure out if it was a hiss or a growl or a sigh.

It didn’t matter. Stone kept propelling him forward, not caring when Matt tripped over grass and the edge of the Valliers’ back patio and his own feet, causing more blood to run from the wound on his side where his stitches had ripped. Matt was useless while Stone got the door open, and he retreated outside again before Matt could apologize or ask what was going on. Hands were on him from behind—he threw an elbow towards Micah’s face before he caught himself—to pull him into the house and slam the door shut between him and the rest of the fight.

Weak, weak.

Someone was saying something. Muffled. Matt was underwater. “What?” he rasped.

“What happened?” Micah shouted.

That was an excellent question. Matt dug his knuckles into the side of his own head. “Noise. Loud.”

“You okay?” Micah asked, still shouting.

Matt gritted his teeth. “Fine,” he bit out. He should get back out there. Stone couldn’t just dump him on the sidelines and expect him to—

_BANG._

Matt ducked at the sound of the gun, grabbing for Micah to pull him out of harm’s way, but the screaming voice was unfamiliar, as was the body slumping to the ground, bleeding. A second later, he realized Maeva was the one holding the handgun.

Well. He hadn’t expected that.

Wincing, Matt straightened up, _praying_ for his hearing to come back. He couldn’t protect anyone like this; he might as well go hide upstairs with Ella.

_BANG._

Maeva had fired again, this time unaccompanied by a scream. Was it some kind of a warning shot, or did she miss? Was someone breaking in right now? Matt couldn’t tell. Helpless, he was helpless. He started forward anyway, but he felt a rush of fresh air in the direction of the back door, someone had opened it, and before he could put himself between Maeva and whoever was trying to get in, someone grabbed him from behind.

He whirled, swung his fist, and the guy dropped like a punching bag cut from its chains. But there was someone else, smelling of cigarettes, still standing. Matt lunged, choosing speed over strength and accuracy, desperate to land the first hit so they’d both be destabilized. It worked; he snapped the guy’s head back and quickly took out his knees, yanking the knife he was waving around out of his hands and using the handle to knock him unconscious. He caught his breath.

Outside, a new sound stole Matt’s attention, just audible under the ringing in his ears. He cocked his head.

Sirens.

_Finally._

Matt quickly took stock. There were three men lying on the floor of the Valliers’ house in various states of injury. Micah was—whoa, Micah was also on the floor back in the kitchen. Unconscious—when did that happen?

He winced at the scream of the sirens. But they were close enough for the bad guys to hear, and bitten-off curses punctuated the air outside. Men were running away. And Matt’s allies were hiding. Distracted by his efforts to track all the chaos outside, he didn’t hear Ella’s lighter footsteps coming down the stairs until she was right next to him.

“Matt,” she gasped, strangled.

He wasn’t sure which one of them needed it more when he picked her up, ignoring the lightning strike of pain in his side. Fresh blood soaked his shirt and he tried to shift her weight to keep it away from her, keep it from staining her, but she wrapped her arms around his neck and refused to budge.


	55. What Does it Cost to Find a Home?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Beautiful Life by Colony House (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCtEg6brxAA) which is basically Stone's theme song for me.
> 
> WARNING: fluff ahead, but followed by a cliffhanger ending...and it's gonna be a bit sad after this chapter, for a while. So if you wanna take a break until all the sad chapters are posted, I totally understand! Or walk through the angst together! Just take care of yourself!

Brett

“NYPD!” Brett wasted no time on formalities, opting to just _break the door down_. He’d cite the exigent circumstances exception to the warrant requirement if Murdock put up a fuss, but he really didn’t expect him to object.

Brett led the other officers straight into the home, only to stop dead in the living room to take in the scene. The father was unconscious on the floor in the back, the mother was still holding a gun, and a bloody Daredevil was holding a seven-year-old girl _holding a knife_.

“You’re late,” Ella informed Brett. “You’re really, really late.”

Matt shushed her.

Yeah, she was a spitfire. Brett remembered that much from her testimony. He’d tried not to laugh about flustered Tower got just from dealing with her. (That was a lie. Brett and his mom laughed a lot. Tower might be the DA, but that didn’t mean the man had Brett’s respect.)

“Ma’am,” Brett said evenly to the mother. “Put down the gun.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Vallier made a startled, shaky sound and quickly placed the gun on the floor. She took a step back, like she thought she’d be tempted to pick it up again.

Brett secured the weapon, then turned to the little girl. “Uh, excuse me, can I get that knife from you?”

Ella just gripped it tighter, but Matt leaned in closer, nudging her temple with his forehead and whispering something until she finally, reluctantly, held out her hand.

Not entirely sure what he would’ve done if she’d kept resisting, Brett swiftly confiscated the knife as other officers spread out around the home, handcuffing the trespassers they found and maneuvering them into vehicles. Brett managed to spread Mr. Vallier out on the couch; he seemed uninjured aside from a nasty mark on his head. When Brett tried to approach Matt, who was obviously bleeding, Ella glared suspiciously at him.

“I just wanna make sure he’s okay,” Brett said calmly.

Matt tried to shift her weight and a wince crossed his face. “I’m fine, Brett. And…no offense, but you should get out of here.”

Brett’s eyebrows shot up. “And why’s that?”

“Because…” He winced again. “Because there are certain other individuals who need more help than I do, and they can’t get it as long as the NYPD’s here.”

Oh. _Oh._ “I didn’t hear that,” Brett declared. “I don’t have any idea what you’re even talking about.”

Matt cracked a thin and fragile grin. “Thanks, Brett.”

Shaking his head to himself, Brett double-checked that no one besides Matt was in imminent danger of bleeding out or going into shock. He left some forms in case anyone wanted to give a statement or press charges, but honestly he couldn’t help hoping that all of this could be left behind.

Matt—and the Vallier family, apparently—could use a break.

 

 

Matt

It felt like a long time before the police completely cleared out of the area. Ella fell asleep in his arms, despite her repeated affirmations that she wasn’t tired. She kept jerking back awake. Trauma.

For his part, Matt was glad to hold her. His still-ringing ears couldn’t hear her heartbeat, but this way he could feel her warm breaths against his neck. And concentrating on listening to her was a blessed distraction from thinking about the fight, about how utterly worthless he’d been at protecting her.

He gritted his teeth. Not—not _entirely_ worthless. He’d helped…but only until that stupid sound took him entirely out of commission.

And what if it happened again? Ella was safe today because of reinforcements, but what if—

Stop.

Finally, the police cleared out, which everyone else seemed to take as a cue to slink over to the Valliers’ house. Probably drawn by the smell of coffee. Maeva started making more pots after she set out the family’s first aid kit, which Matt noted was significantly larger than it had been last time. Micah was unconscious—when did _that_ happen—and the smell of blood almost overwhelmed the smell of coffee, so Matt reluctantly set Ella down on a chair because the only other two people who knew a sufficient amount of first aid were Stone and Frank Castle, and Matt knew for a fact that Jessica would not be okay with either of them touching her.

Then Peter tumbled onto the couch and was too tired to push his mask more than halfway off his face. “ _Ow_ ,” he said, and mumbled something incomprehensible.

Matt was trying to decide whether he should help Jessica or Peter first when Stone suddenly crouched down in front of the teenager, pulling his suturing stuff from his pocket. “Let me look at you,” he murmured.

Matt blinked.

“’Kay,” Peter said easily.

Stone started sterilizing Peter’s cuts. “You did well, Peter.”

“You think?” Peter asked. Like Stone’s opinion mattered to him.

“You positioned us intelligently, and you handled yourself well even when they blasted that sound.”

“You think?”

“Better than Matty, at any rate,” Stone said snidely.

Rolling his eyes, Matt just asked Jessica if she would grant him the honor of allowing him to tend her various injuries. Which she did. While he was kneeling in front of her, cleaning out a long cut on her forearm, Micah came stumbling into the room, groaning lowly. Maeva made him sit down. He made no comment about the vigilantes crowding his living room.

Matt had dealt with about half of Jessica’s injuries when Ella woke up (again). Matt half-listened as her head turned, taking in all the new people who’d invaded her home—to help and not to hurt. He wasn’t sure why her heartrate suddenly sped up.

But then she marched right across the room to stand in front of the Punisher. “Frank!” she said excitedly.

What.

“Hey,” Frank rumbled.

Matt started to stand up, but Jessica grabbed his wrist, stopping him. “Calm down, Murdock. He’s a friendly.”

Matt tugged (fruitlessly). “I know, but—”

“Oh, you do? Then act like it.” She pulled him back into a sitting position. “And stitch me up. Then let me do you.” She shrugged. “Or don’t, I might stab you.”

Across the room, Ella was still peppering Frank Castle with questions. He answered her calmly; it sounded like he was enjoying himself. In the corner, Dex stood alone in a corner, but his breathing was slow and easy for once, and he didn’t have anything in his hands. Nearby, Stone was still working on Peter. Maeva wove between everyone, setting fresh mugs of warm coffee on every horizontal surface. Micah, who had tensed up as much as Matt did when Ella started chatting with the Punisher, had finally relaxed again.

Huh.

Friendlies.

 

 

Dex

That felt good. Simple. Facing a threat like that, with a crystal-clear mission, knowing everyone with him was on the same team…it was like when he was in the military, or when he was in the FBI before everything fell apart. You could disagree with the guys next to you about politics, religion, and pineapple on pizza, but at the end of the day, you had each other’s back against a common enemy. That was how things _should_ be.

Dex didn’t want to let go of that.

Throw on top of that the little girl’s face when she’d seen her protectors all streaming into her living room. Dex couldn’t think of a single time when he’d felt so…he wasn’t sure how to describe it. Sister Maggie would probably say humbled. That sounded about right.

Dex didn’t want to let go of that either.

But he kept thinking and thinking. He knew the laws—he was supposed to be in prison, waiting for a trial. Then he’d get thrown into prison even longer. Or maybe just get zapped. He’d rather get zapped than spend his life in a cage.

But Stone didn’t want Dex to go back to jail, and Matt was a defense lawyer. And Dex _helped_ them. So maybe they owed him a favor. Maybe they could keep him breathing free air. Maybe, if he just kept helping them…. He tightened his grip on the gun he’d stolen from one of the bad guys who’d almost used it to shoot Stone. But Dex had gotten there first. He’d saved Stone’s life. He didn’t think Stone even realized. But that was okay.

Matt or Stone would notice the gun and take it back. Dex wasn’t sure of the extent of their powers, but they’d hear it or smell it, or….

So Dex cleaned the weapon more thoroughly than he’d ever cleaned anything and used other strong scents (stolen bleach and rubbing alcohol) to tr to smother the scent, and then he tucked the weapon into his belt at the small of his back, held so securely against his body that it moved with him, like an extension of him.

And when no one asked for the gun, he didn’t give it back.

 

 

Foggy

 _Karen and I need to tell you something,_ Matt texted a few days later, and refused to answer any more questions. Which was, ya know, terrifying.

“You shouldn’t panic so much, Foggy Bear,” Marci told him.

On the one hand, she was right. On the other hand, this was Matt they were talking about. Panic had proven to be a not-unwarranted response.

She sighed. “Go over and talk to them.” Then she leaned forward and kissed him. “Tell Matt that he still needs to get his suit for the wedding.”

The wedding. Because even though they’d thought it’d be smarter to get legally married sooner than later in case something happened to one of them, they still wanted a ceremony. Marci wanted to wear a gorgeous dress and Foggy wanted to tell the whole world (by which he meant, a hundred or so of their closest friends and family) that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. “Will do,” he promised.

By the time he got to Matt and Karen’s apartment, his fears had calmed slightly. If something was imminent, they’d call him, right? Unless they thought the phone lines were tapped or something. Which if Fisk was behind it, was actually a possibility.

And with that, the paranoia amped back up again.

He burst past Matt as soon as Matt opened the door (wearing all black like he planned to go out later). “Just tell me whose funeral I need to prepare for so I can calm down already.”

Frank barreled straight into him, barking and wiggling like he’d come just to see her. Picking her up, he let her lick his cheek without complaint and some of his panic died down again. It was impossible to be panicked while cuddling any kind of lab-derivative dog. That was just science.

“No funeral,” Karen said, sitting on the couch and watching his and Frank’s interaction with glee. “We just needed to let you know something so it doesn’t surprise you later and you get mad at us.”

“You might get mad at us anyway,” Matt muttered, shuffling past Foggy from behind and retreating into the kitchen, ostensibly to get drinks but possibly, Foggy suspected, to use the counter as a barrier between himself and Foggy.

Foggy narrowed his eyes at Karen, although she looked just as unaffected by the glare as Matt would be. “What did you guys do?”

Karen got up slowly from the couch. She was wearing an oversized pearly-white sweater and looked like an angel. Foggy was not fooled. “Well,” she began, “we realized that Matt winning his case is just one case. If Tower decided to prosecute Matt…and me…because Fisk told him to…that kind of corruption from the DA’s office isn’t necessarily going to stop. Other people could be at risk, including you and Marci, or anyone Fisk doesn’t like, really, as long as Tower is so…susceptible.”

“So?” Foggy demanded, impatient.

“So we thought we should speak to Tower, you know, and just…let him know our concerns, and the potential ramifications if he decided to—”

“We blackmailed Tower,” Matt interrupted, walking briskly back to the living room and handing Foggy a beer on the way back. “With regards to Fisk’s influence, but also with regards to the Bar and Felix Manning’s prosecution.”

“Felix Manning is being prosecuted?”

“He will be,” Karen said, her voice sweet and deadly certain.

“And…how did Tower take it?” Foggy asked, not sure he really wanted to know the answer.

“Like the spineless coward he is,” she assured him.

“Karen,” Matt said, mildly chastising.

“Well, he _is_.”

“Let the record reflect,” Foggy cut in, “that I’m not one hundred percent okay with this.”

“Noted,” Matt said slowly.

“But…thank you for telling me about it.” Technically, that created an ethical obligation on Foggy’s part to report them to the Bar. To report Matt, at least. But let’s be real—they were _way_ past that. “Seriously. I realize you guys didn’t have to tell me, so…thanks for that.”

Matt’s smile was small and shy and it made Foggy think of the first time in law school that Foggy had complimented him. Matt gave a really good answer to one of the professor’s questions, and afterwards Foggy brought it up again because it was literally that impressive and because Foggy tried not to be stingy with compliments. Matt had at first looked like Foggy was speaking a different language. But then that smile showed up. (Foggy had instantly resolved to be more effusive with telling Matt exactly how awesome Foggy thought he was.)

Suddenly, Matt tilted his head, interrupting Foggy’s thoughts. “Stone’s coming.”

“What? Why?”

He headed for the door to the roof. “Dex asked if he could talk to my mom, so Stone and I thought we could train together again.” He paused and his head tipped slightly back towards Foggy and Karen. When he spoke next, his voice was tentative. “You guys could watch.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Karen hissed. Typical; she loved watching Matt train.

Foggy frowned. “Doesn’t training normally involve, like, running around and tight-roping across telephone wires or something?”

Matt shook his head. “Not tonight.” He disappeared onto his roof.

Karen nudged Foggy and jerked her head towards the stairs, silently communicating that Foggy would be in trouble if he didn’t take Matt up on the offer.

Which wasn’t fair. Foggy had even asked Matt to train him, and he’d been the one to push Matt into the ring! It was just that Foggy wasn’t still entirely comfortable around Stone. But who _was?_ The guy was weird. He had all the creepy I-can-hear-your-heartbeat-and-smell-your-fear senses without any of Matt’s puppy dog qualities to soften them. And, given the choice, he always opted for pointy things over fists. And he’d literally killed people. Don’t forget that part.

But Stone was important to Matt.

“Okay,” Foggy grumbled. “I’m coming.”

Karen grabbed some blankets from a closet and nudged Foggy up to the roof, and there was Stone, dressed in all black with half his hair tied messily back. It was growing out again, casting strange shadows on his face. Matt trotted over to meet him, and the two started talking too quietly for Foggy to hear.

Foggy felt weirdly left out, and there was still a niggling worry that Stone was a problem. If he was being honest, it reminded him of how he’d felt when Elektra first showed up.

He shook his head sharply. Stone wasn’t like Elektra. Maybe he used to be, but he wasn’t anymore. Besides, Matt was a grownup. He could choose his own friends. And Stone had Karen’s stamp of approval, don’t forget that.

“Stop thinking so hard,” Karen whispered, spreading out the blankets. “You look constipated.”

He snorted. “Charming.”

Then he tensed when Stone drew a sword. It didn’t make a scraping sound like it did in the movies—it was completely silent. Foggy wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been staring so intently. He tensed again when Stone tossed the sword at Matt—literally _tossed_ , like it was a pool noodle—but Matt caught it, and his grin glinted shark-like in the moonlight.

And then something happened, Foggy didn’t what, some cue or signal or something, and suddenly they were locked in combat. Foggy fiercely squashed the temptation to look around for a referee. There was none.

But when he stopped silently freaking out, he had to admit that the spectacle in front of him was straight out of the movies, maybe even as good as _The Princess Bride_. Matt and Stone danced across the rooftop; in their dark clothes, they looked like nothing more than each other’s shadows. It was pretty obvious that Stone was more experienced with swords, but Matt was a fast learner and, more importantly, obviously having the time of his life.

“You realize,” Foggy eventually whispered to Karen, “that he’s gonna try to teach your kids to use swords.”

Karen stroked Frank’s fur where Frank was standing next to her, too tense with all the swordplay going on to actually lie down. “Obviously.” Then she seemed to realize what he’d said. “Wait, hold on, _kids?_ ”

“Yeah, multiple. So they can practice together.”

“Or our kid could just practice with your kids,” Karen suggested.

“I like Foggy’s idea better,” Matt called, and Stone smacked him over the head with the flat of his sword for getting distracted. Matt just laughed and retaliated, driving Stone towards the edge of the roof. They were moving so fast that Foggy would’ve panicked about one of them falling off—except that this was about the fiftieth time they’d traipsed right up to the edge without slipping over.

“Showoffs,” Foggy commented.

“Mmm,” Karen agreed, watching Matt appreciatively, which Matt must have somehow picked up on because he added an extra flourish to his next move, and Stone slapped him with the flat of the sword again.

The weirdest part was how unweird it was.

 

 

Stone

It was clear that Dex still had a gun. Stone didn’t even know when he’d acquired it. He and Matty had discussed—via text, of course, so Dex would be unaware—what to do about it. Needless to say, Matty had been predictably uptight. He didn’t approve of guns, and he certainly didn’t approve of Dex having one.

But Stone pointed out what a difference it had clearly made for Dex to be brought along to protect Ella. To be trusted, however reluctantly. Already, Dex seemed less bored and more hopeful. And he seemed more forgiving of Gao’s destruction. What if confiscating the weapon now undid some of that change, proved to Dex that he wasn’t trusted and would forever be considered somehow excluded?

Matty had brought up the risk.

Stone had reminded him firstly that Stone would be by Dex’s side to stop him if he tried anything, and secondly that Dex could kill people as easily with a paperclip. But the symbol of the gun—that would matter to him.

 _It’s not a good idea,_ Matty texted.

 _I know him better than you do,_ Stone responded.

Strangely, that was the argument that won the day. And so now, Stone was pretending ignorance to the gun under Dex’s belt as he brought him to the Valliers’ house. Ella wanted to thank him—both of them. And since she was grounded, they had to come to her.

Micah Vallier opened the door, poorly hiding how deeply he disagreed with this entire situation. But Matty stood just behind him, a silent guardian, and apparently Micah trusted Matty to keep Dex—or Stone, perhaps—in line.

Ella pushed past her father. “Mr. Stone! I have something for you!”

Micah’s brow tightened at the enthusiastic familiarity of her greeting.

Ella planted herself on the porch and thrust something into Stone’s hands. It was a piece of paper. A picture. Mindful of his audience, Stone was careful not to look at it too closely. He gave it a passing glance, enough, he hoped, to convince Ella that he’d seen it, and thanked her.

Her mouth pursed suspiciously, but she didn’t push. Instead, she turned shyly towards Dex. “Um, Mr., um…Dex?”

Dex smiled—a soft smile Stone had never seen before—and quickly bit it back, as if unsure whether he was allowed.

“I have something for you, too.” She held out her hand again, this time bearing not a picture but a what appeared to be a…pale pink ball of putty. “I made it myself,” she said. “Matt said you like to throw stuff, so I thought you could throw this? Or squeeze it if you’re upset. Like a…a…”

“A stress ball,” Matty said from behind.

Dex looked torn between confusion, annoyance, and something gentler.

“And it’s pink,” she went on, “’cause that’s a color that’s s’posed to help people calm down.”

Dex glared at Matty. Micah tensed.

“Pink was her idea,” Matty said quickly. “You think _I_ have a color preference?”

“Do you own anything that isn’t soaked in red?” Dex retorted. “Thanks,” he said more sincerely to Ella. He held out his hand; Ella gave him a high-five and immediately giggled.

Stone wanted to linger, but he didn’t want to overstay their welcome. “We should go.” He folded his picture and slipped it into his pocket.

But he and Dex had barely reached the sidewalk beyond the front lawn when Ella came running after them. “Mr. Stone!” she cried.

Stone turned, noting briefly that though Micah and Matty were clearly observing neither of them had followed her. Dex was a bit further down the sidewalk; he stopped, but didn’t come any closer. “Yes?”

“I forgot to say sorry!”

He tilted his head. “For what, little one?”

Her round eyes stared pleadingly up at him. “I lost your knife, the one you gave me. Someone took it from me.”

Raising his eyebrows, Stone wordlessly reached into his jacket, pulled out another (larger) knife. (Micah’s heartrate took flight, but he stayed put.)

Ella’s face lit up. “I won’t lose this one, I _promise_.”

He curled her fingers over the handle. “Good.”

“Thank you, Mr. Stone!”

Stick’s name in her young voice sounded suddenly wrong. He cleared his throat. “That’s not my name.”

She blinked up at him. “What’s your name, then?”

Slowly, he squatted down until they were nearly at eye level. “My name is Emiliano.”

“Emi…” Her forehead scrunched up. “Emiliano?” Then she cocked her head as if to ask if she’d gotten it right.

He gave her a nod. “That’s it.”

“Thank you, Mr. Emiliano,” she said formally, then giggled.

“Just Emiliano is fine.” Then he paused. “Ella…”

“Yes?”

“I…I should apologize to you, as well.” He squared his jaw, fighting to meet her stare and not look away, thankful that Dex and everyone else was staying back and affording them some small measure of privacy. “I, ah…I’m not sure if you know this, but when you were kidnapped from the children’s home—”

“Matt rescued me,” she interrupted, like that was the most important part of the story. To her, it probably was.

“But I was the one who set it up.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You weren’t even there.”

“I know, but I found the people who did it. I paid them to take you.” He averted his gaze. “Endangering you wasn’t my goal, but…” He trailed off, unsure if explaining how carelessly he’d used her would burden her unnecessarily. Despite all she’d been through, she was still so young. “I’m sorry.”

She didn’t reply.

He hurried on. “And when I broke into your room to tell you about your father, I…I shouldn’t have done that. I thought perhaps you might distance yourself from Matty, which I—”

“Why?” she interrupted again, and this time her voice cracked. “Why would you _want_ that?”

His throat tightened. “Because I was taught that distance was safer.”

“Oh.” She was quiet for a moment, apparently thinking hard. Then she edged a step closer, head tilted. “So you must’ve been worried about Matt?”

“Well, no, I only—”

“If you wanted distance between you and him because that would make him safer, doesn’t that mean you were worried about him?”

Stone frowned.

“And if you were that worried about him, doesn’t that mean that _you_ didn’t have all that distance between you and him after all?”

Stone stared at her. “I…I suppose not.”

“Besides, it didn’t work,” she informed him. “Matt’s my best friend.” It was her turn to frown. “So is Foggy. And Tasha from Everett’s and Megan from school.” The frown cleared away. “It didn’t work,” she repeated firmly.

He knew, and he was fiercely glad. “Even so, I’m sorry. Can you…can you forgive me?”

She didn’t hesitate—she threw herself at him with all the force of an attack, but it was simply so she could embrace him. Stone’s arms came up hesitantly to rest around her before the rest of him could figure out what to do.

Then, so abruptly that he had to jerk out of the way lest her head catch him under the jaw, she pulled back, eyes wide. “I’m grounded!” Before Stone could interpret that, she was off, sprinting back towards the house with apologies tumbling from her lips as soon as she reached her father.

Who did not seem upset.

 

 

Stone and Dex went back to the gym, since there were a few more hours to kill before nightfall. Truth be told, Stone was considering taking Dex out at night. He clearly needed a purpose, and why shouldn’t his skills be put to use—for good rather than for evil?

While Dex bounced his stress ball of every surface imaginable, Stone carefully unfolded Ella’s picture. He breathed out slowly. It was nothing like the picture she’d given him before, so long ago—that had been a picture of a figure, clearly intended to be Stone, standing proudly in the mouth of the tunnels: a single figure nearly swallowed up with black. He wasn’t smiling. But she’d given him a cape, which rippled slightly. Stone was no expert on popular culture, but he’d understood what the cape symbolized.

This picture, however, was different. This picture showed Stone arm-in-arm with Matty while Ella held his other hand. Her parents were behind her, and Karen and Foggy and Foggy’s wife were behind Matt. Foggy and his wife were slightly squished, as if she’d included too many people in the drawing and run out of room. But everyone was smiling.

“What’s your picture?” Dex asked.

Stone jumped slightly; he hadn’t realized Dex had come close. He didn’t particularly want to share the picture, but he wanted less to alienate Dex. He wordlessly passed the paper over.

“Huh,” Dex said.

Stone shook himself. “I need to leave. Stay here.”

“Huh? Why?”

Stone didn’t bother to explain; he simply left the gym and walked the few blocks to Claire’s apartment before he could argue himself out of it.

The scent of her apartment enveloped him as she opened the door, leaving his head spinning with the aroma of coffee and pomegranate and _her_.

“What’s the pretext?” she asked, smirking.

“None,” he said boldly.

The smirk became a smile as she held open the door. “You want anything to drink? Or eat, for that matter. My cousin left half a casserole here after a game night a few days ago. I can reheat it.”

“No, thank you.” She had a cousin? A cousin who visited for game nights? Suddenly, he wanted to know everything. What other family members lived nearby? Were they friends as well as family? Did they have to wait for an invitation, or could they come to her home whenever they wished?

“Are you bleeding somewhere?”

“Well, not problematically so.” He followed her into the apartment, trying to ignore the nervous fluttering in his gut. He definitely had a few minor bruises and sprains, maybe a stab wound or two, but they were inconsequential.

“That’s a terrible thing to say to a nurse,” she informed him, heading towards the closet for her first aid kit.

But he caught her wrist, stopping her. “Claire.”

She lifted her chin. “What?”

“I didn’t come for treatment.”

Her voice lowered. “So what did you come for?”

He wasn’t sure how to answer, was ashamed of the fear he felt at putting it into words. Instead, he tested the waters, reaching out to unhook a lock of hair from behind her ear, brushing the back of his hand against her cheek so he could feel the heat of her blush.

Her heartbeat was singing.

“Claire.” She deserved words, and it wasn’t as if he hadn’t rehearsed them, albeit only in his own mind. “Claire, you are…something that I don’t understand.”

She snorted. “Thanks.”

“But I want to understand.”

She grew still.

The back of his hand still touched her cheek; he turned his wrist to cup her face. “And you deserve someone who already understands, so I really have no reason to ask this of you or foster any hope whatsoever, except…except that I’m holding your face and you haven’t moved away or told me to stop, and _please_ tell me what that means because I don’t understand—”

“Shh,” she said, silencing him immediately. “It means I think you understand more every day.” She hesitated, then leaned slightly into his touch as her heart pounded louder, faster. “It means I think you understand enough.”

He didn’t quite have time to process the details of her words before he was leaning down and his lips found hers.

She wasted no time, stepping in close and rising up on her toes to take control of the kiss, hands trailing up over his back to tangle in his hair. It shocked him, though perhaps it shouldn’t have. He pressed one of his hands to the small of her back, holding her against him, but set the other chastely on her hip.

When she pulled back for air, she didn’t leave his arms. “I’ve been waiting for that.”

If her reaction to the kiss had stunned him, her words stunned him even more. “Claire…”

He couldn’t say anything else before her lips were against his again. He wanted to tell her all the ways he promised to change, get better, become perfect for her. But she didn’t give him the chance. She experimented, changing the angle of the kiss and eventually pushing him back until he was sitting on her couch and she was settled in his lap with her mouth still sealed over his.

He set one hand lightly on her neck and focused on her pulse beating fast under his touch, assuring himself that this was real.

Maybe Stick was right. Maybe he was soft, and maybe it would get him killed. But he knew without a doubt that death would be worth it if he got to have her, even for a second.

When she finally broke the kiss, she didn’t move away. “I don’t know where this is going,” she whispered. Her dark eyes searched his. “But I’m willing to find out.”

 

 

He was familiar with the idea of being in love. He did read, after all. He’d always scoffed when characters spoke of walking on clouds or otherwise losing their faculties. And yet Stone mistimed a jump on the way back to the gym because he’d been too lost in the memory of her dark eyes and the inexplicable hope he’d seen there. He’d landed in a dumpster, uninjured but undignified.

Finally, he stepped into the gym and stopped dead, trying to make sense of the sight before him. Matty had shown up, though he hadn’t informed Stone, and now he and Dex were in the ring together. _Sparring_. Dex had no projectiles to throw and Matty was clearly the better fighter at hand-to-hand, but Matty was also clearly holding back, allowing Dex to land a few hits. And Dex, in turn, was pulling his punches just enough to keep from doing actual damage.

Matty ducked out from under one of Dex’s strikes, bouncing backwards on his toes. “Stone, wanna join us?”

Stone was considering the logistics of three-way every-man-for-himself fight in the relatively small boxing ring and wondering if he _really_ wanted to get that bruised when Matty suddenly held up a hand, stopping Dex.

He moved towards the edge of the ring, brow furrowed and head tilted. “Stone?”

“What?”

“Were you…you…” His eyes widened. “ _No_.”

“What?”

“You—!” And with that, he burst out laughing even as he slid gracefully out from under the ropes, trotting over to stand in front of Stone with his hands shoved deep into his pockets. “Wow. All right. That’s gonna take some getting used to, but…congratulations.”

Stone licked his lips, catching a taste of Claire.

“What?” Dex asked confusedly, coming up behind them.

“Nothing,” Matty said immediately.

Dex’s expression darkened with the realization that he was being left out.

“It’s personal,” Stone said flatly, shooting Matty a glare. He was oblivious.

“Oh.” Dex’s eyebrows shot up. “ _Personal_. Gotcha.”

“ _Taci_ ,” Stone muttered. At least Matty wasn’t giving him the…what had Claire called it that one time? The shovel talk? At least Matty wasn’t giving him the shovel talk again. In fact, he seemed genuinely pleased. It stirred something warm in Stone’s chest.

Matty shrugged. “Anyway, uh, my mom wanted me to come help out around the church, and I was thinking you guys might want to come.”

“Why would we…” Stone trailed off. Giving Dex purpose, albeit a small and temporary one. Or perhaps not so temporary, if half the things Stone had overheard about churches were true.

“We can go?” Dex asked. Of Stone, not Matty, because Stone, apparently, had the final say in his eyes.

“Yes,” Stone decided.

And that was why they approached the church, under a sky that had already fallen dark. A ceremony of some kind was underway, as evidenced by the music, and the doors opened to reveal a room bathed in red light.

Matty was laughing as they stepped over the threshold and Stone realized something was wrong. Dex froze in the doorway, pale as snow, his heart suddenly pounding.

Matty heard it too. “Dex? What—”

“Stop,” Dex whispered, jaw tight. One had slipped behind his back.

 

 

Dex

He saw red. The whole church was red and he couldn’t tell if it was from the lights or the red lenses over his eyes. He couldn’t get the smell of smoke out of his nose, his brain. His skin itched under the weight of the stolen suit.

He’d been sent here to kill. His body ached from rope-wrapped fists, from the splintered wood of a confessional, from hitting the floor after falling from one story up.

He _had_ killed. The priest blocked his target.

“Dex,” Stone said from very far away.

Dex blinked. Stone? He wasn’t part of this story. Dex blinked again. Where was he? Matt was in front of him. Not Matt. Daredevil. Dex was supposed to kill Karen Page and she was hiding with Daredevil.

Dex’s fingers found the handle of the gun.

“Get him out of here,” Matt was muttering to Stone.

And do what? Put him where? “No,” Dex gasped.

“Dex,” Matt said, stepping closer. “Listen to me very—”

“Stop!” Dex pulled out the gun. Matt and Stone froze and in that moment of stillness, everything made sense again.

But then someone saw him and screamed and all the screams echoed in his head. The stupid people at the church, running back and forth like scared ants, getting in the way. They were all gonna get killed if they weren’t careful. Why couldn’t they just get out of the way?

The man in bloodred sunglasses took a step towards Dex and that was too much. Dex palmed back the slide, heard the _click_ as the round chambered. Squeezed the trigger as someone with dark hair put himself between the bullet and its target.

Dex didn’t look away. The flash was blinding and the _bang_ echoed in his ears and he’d heard that sound so many times that it didn’t help him figure out where he was. He jammed back the slide again but before he could get off another shot, something heavy drove into his temple. Bright lights popped in his vision before everything went black.


	56. Save Sorrow for the Souls in Doubt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Carry Me Down" by Demon Hunter (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wloGEBGWlg).

Matt

Matt’s knuckles throbbed while Dex hit the ground unconscious. All around him, parishioners screamed. Three of the nuns were already on their phones calling for police, for an ambulance. One of the nuns was keeping people away, trying to get them to go outside.

Matt fell to his knees beside Stone. The bullet had passed through him, but he was bleeding out fast. Matt was drowning in the smell of it. He reached for Stone’s hand and squeezed it. His throat tightened when Stone squeezed back.

Stone’s mouth moved, too quietly for anyone else to hear. “Gotta get outta here,” he breathed.

“No, no, wait for the—”

Stone pushed the words between gasps for breath: “ _I can’t stay here_.”

Everything inside Matt wanted to yell at him for being stupid. But at the same time, he could only imagine how panicked Stone would feel, strapped down to a gurney and locked away in an ambulance, completely out of control of his own fate. So Matt swallowed hard and said, “Okay. I’ve got you.” He tried to get under him. He was breaking every rule about moving injured people, but…Stone didn’t officially exist. And he liked it that way. And it was pretty clear that Stone was gonna try to move no matter what, so surely it was better that Matt helped?

Nuns crowded around, hands reaching out. Matt and Stone ignored them, and ignored their instructions to stop, to slow down, to _wait_. They were getting in the way; Matt snarled at them to back off. If they hadn’t harbored the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen in their basement, maybe they would’ve resisted. Instead, they cleared a path. Stone leaned heavily on Matt’s shoulder, his breaths shallow and too fast in Matt’s ear.

They were fine. They were _fine_. Even if Stone refused an ambulance, Matt could call Claire. Or he could hide Stone close by for Maggie. (Could Maggie even handle this caliber of wound?) They stumbled out of the church. It was broad daylight; people shrieked and reached for their phones. Matt gritted his teeth and managed to get Stone around a corner, into some shadows.

Stone fell back against a dirty wall, barely keeping his feet. “…Thank you.”

Fury lashed through Matt at the thanks. “You idiot, he was aiming for _me!_ ”

(Why? Why hadn’t Stone let Matt take the hit?)

Stone coughed and his words slurred. He slid to the ground. “Y’ve got more.”

More—more—more to lose, more people who loved Matt, who needed Matt. After all these years, Stick was wrong. And Stone knew it.

“Just—hold on.” Crouching in front of him, Matt pulled out his phone to call Claire, but before he could punch in a single number, he heard it. Rough swearing back at the church.

Dex was awake again.

Stone stiffened; he’d heard it too. “Go.”

“No.” Matt got through five digits of Claire’s number before Stone’s trembling hand locked around his wrist.

“ _Go._ He’ll—” A groan slipped out. “He’ll hurt them.”

“You’ll die,” Matt said flatly.

Then both their heads snapped back towards the church at the sound of new screaming. Police sirens blared.

“He’ll be caught,” Stone rasped.

 _Because he shot you!_ Matt wanted to yell. “Would you just worry about yourself for once?”

Stone was already trying to push Matt away, a fierce movement that had to be hurting him. “You know they’ll take any excuse to kill him.”

“Damnit, Stone.” Matt stood up, spun around, and started running back towards the church.

_God, You have to keep him safe._

The church was swarming with people. Nuns, police officers, firefighters. More sirens were still approaching.

Matt shouldered his way through the crowd. There was a small empty space surrounding Dex, who was on the ground; some officer was pinning him to the floor with a knee between his ribs. They’d cuffed his hands behind his back. The smell of ozone lingered around him from a taser.

The cop pinning Dex was cursing in his ear. “Where is he, you asshole piece of shit? Where is he?”

Matt came to a stop in the cleared area. “Excuse me, officer—”

“Sir.” Another officer stepped smoothly in front of him, one hand up and the other reaching for the gun at her belt. “You need to back up.”

“I need to protect his rights,” Matt snapped.

She shifted her weight to block him. It also put her slightly off-balance. He could plow through her if he wanted. “You’re saying he’s your client?”

Matt had no idea. Stone said Foggy said something about representing him, maybe, but he and Foggy hadn’t exactly sat down and talked about it, and Matt believed Dex needed help but…but Dex shot Stone. He exhaled sharply through his nose and, with about the same level of thought he used when jumping off buildings, said, “Yes. He is.”

She swore under her breath. “Poindexter is a dangerous and wanted felon. You need to—”

“Has he been read his rights? No? Then I’ll see you in court for custodially interrogating my client without advising him of his Constitutionally protected rights.” Probably. He wasn’t entirely sure what they were asking Dex about, whether the questions fell into the public safety exception or not. He was blowing smoke, still not thinking things through, probably because half his attention was trying to listen for Stone out in an alleyway somewhere.

Cursing again, she stepped back. “Get close, but don’t touch anyone.”

Curling his lip, Matt moved forward to stand over Dex, whose head turned, hair flopping against the church’s dirty floor.

“Matt,” he whispered.

Swallowing, Matt ignored him. (He wished he had his cane just for an excuse to make a fist.) “Officer, my client is surrounded by police and in handcuffs. He can’t do any more damage. Let him up.”

The other officer’s head tilted back to look at him, and his angry heartbeat stuttered in surprise. “Murdock? D-Daredevil?”

There were way too many things Matt was already panicking about to even think about the strangeness of a cop addressing him as both Murdock and Daredevil. Matt lifted his chin.

“You representing him?” the officer asked. “He’s the _bad guy_.”

Dex made a sound. A whimper. Suddenly, Matt could smell his tears.

Matt swallowed again. “Put him in a car if that’s what you need to do. Stop dragging this out.”

“Whatever.” The cop stood up, pulling Dex roughly to his feet. Dex stumbled slightly and three other officers sprang out from the perimeter; one cracked Dex across the ribs with a nightstick before Matt could do anything.

What was Matt even supposed to do about it?

“He’s controlled,” Matt growled. “Just lost his balance.”

No one said anything to that. They pushed Dex out of the church towards the nearest squad car.

“Dex!” Matt hurried to keep pace. “Listen to me, don’t do anything, don’t _say_ anything. Once you get to the station, tell us everything that happened in the car and we’ll—”

They shoved Dex into the backseat and slammed the door.

Matt couldn’t hear Stone anymore.

“You wanna accompany him or something, Counselor?” one of the officers asked.

Matt took a slow step back and shook his head.

The officers dispersed, some to their own cars, others back to the church to maintain control. The two in the car with Dex were excited, congratulating themselves on being the ones to finally bring Poindexter in. Maggie was talking to someone, giving a slow and halting statement like she was afraid of saying the wrong thing.

Breathing shallowly, Matt pulled out his phone, pressed a number for speed dial.

“What’s up?” Foggy asked.

“Hey,” Matt said shakily. “I need you to get to the precinct.”

“ _What_.”

“It’s not me,” he said quickly. “Dex. He…Fogs, he…”

“I’m on it.”

Words could not describe how thankful he was for Foggy Nelson. They hung up, and Matt dashed back to the alleyway, listening for Stone’s breathing, his heartbeat.

He couldn’t hear any of it.

Ice shot through him. Matt stumbled around a corner. He didn’t find a body. Stone was gone, leaving nothing but drying blood in his wake.

 

 

Stone; ten minutes ago

The world blurred, warping in and out of focus, as he pressed his hand to the wound, trying to staunch the flow of blood. He couldn’t meditate past the pain, but he was doing a decent job of pushing his senses everywhere else. Or perhaps he was simply still in shock?

It was hard to tell. He’d been shot before, yes. But not by Dex.

Then he heard it: the clear, crisp _click_ of handcuffs snapping around Dex’s wrists.

And that, right there…well, that meant that Stone had truly and completely failed him.

Slowly, Stone let his head fall back against the wall. As if from much further away than it really was, he heard Matty arguing with police. Slipping into his lawyer persona. Except that it wasn’t a persona, was it? It was who Matty really was. Because Matty was right when he told Stone so long ago, on the roof of his apartment, that there was more to him than the thing Stick had tried to turn him into.

But what was Stone, really, except for one of Stick’s soldiers, fighting a war that would never end?

Stone pushed away from the wall. Matty needed to focus on Dex now, to step in where Stone had fallen short. He squinted, which did nothing to clear his vision, so he fell back on using scent and sound to navigate, tracking the echoes of his heavy footsteps and his ragged breaths. He had to get away from the church.

Eventually, he wasn’t sure how long, he found a dumpster, the smell pungent enough that he thought it might mask his scent from Matty, at least for a few minutes, and curled up behind it. Dizziness washed over him; the world still spun. He ended up listed to the side, head propped against the dumpster’s cool wall. His eyes had slipped closed at some point and he hadn’t noticed.

_Focus._

His hands fumbled for his suturing supplies. Sick from blood loss, he stopped for a moment, just a moment, and waited for everything to stop spinning. It didn’t.

Inhale, exhale. Dex’s face flashed behind his eyelids. Lost and angry. And now arrested, held in custody, trapped by bars and cuffs. Stone had tried everything, and now look. Matty was right twice over.

Foolish. Arrogant. Stone had been so _sure_. So determined to redeem himself from past failures. And so he’d tried to twist Matty into something like Stick, which Stone now saw with utter clarity would have ruined them both. And then he’d tried to fix Dex and failed. Couldn’t do the _one thing_ he’d tried so hard to do.

He was almost glad Giovanni would never know what happened.

_Focus._

The thread fell through his numb and shaking fingers.

What did it matter?

Clearly, everyone was better off without him.

But he had helped, hadn’t he? He’d done _some_ things he could find pride in? Yes, he’d helped keep Matty’s world together. Keep his friends and family alive. Now Matty could live the kind of life Stick despised. Stone had helped make that happen.

And Stone had even gotten a taste of it himself. Friendship from Matty. Honesty from Karen. Trust from Ella. The promise of hope from Claire. Just fragments, really, and it was hard to say they weren’t misplaced, but they were more than enough.

His head lolled back and his tenuous grasp on his senses broke. The pain screamed through his brain, quickly followed by a gray fog of unconsciousness.

Which was better than he deserved.

 

 

Claire; four days later

Emiliano wasn’t answering her texts.

Claire didn’t like to think of herself as clingy, so she let it go for a day or two. He was probably busy helping Dex or keeping Matt from doing something stupid. It wasn’t that big of a deal. And it wasn’t like when Matt had ghosted her, leaving her a single message after half the city blew up. The city _wasn’t_ blowing up, Emiliano wasn’t in any particular danger, and Claire had other things to worry about. Like trying to keep the mother of one of the hospital’s patients from using so-called home remedies to completely undo everything modern science had accomplished, and helping one of her fellow nurses deal with the fact that she’d just had a newborn and was running on one percent sleep and ninety-nine percent caffeine.

By the third day, Claire told herself she shouldn’t be so surprised. Emiliano was even less experienced at dealing with _Feelings_ than Matt, and that was saying something. All that kissing probably just scared him. Which was dumb and Claire would normally have zero patience for that kind of emotional immaturity, but in this case she kinda knew where it was coming from. So she simply told herself they’d talk about it the next time they saw each other.

But by the fourth day, she was annoyed. After work, she walked around feeling grumpy for a few minutes before telling herself to be a big girl. She called him.

Voicemail. Of course.

“Hey,” Claire said briskly. “What’s going on? I mean, I don’t know what’s going on with you but it’s been kinda weird how you’re not talking to me. Are you okay?” She cleared her throat again. “And I miss you, actually. Actually, I—oh, hang on,” she interrupted herself as her phone beeped in her ear. “It’s Matt, he’s probably almost dying. _Call me._ ”

She switched calls. “Matt, what’s bleeding?”

“I’m fine,” he said, not sounding fine at all. He sounded ragged, like he hadn’t slept for a week. “Have you seen Stone?”

Her heart dropped into her stomach. “No…”

Matt swore quietly on his end of the line. “Okay. Sorry to bother you.”

“Wait!” Because that sounded like he was about to _hang up_ , just call and ask something like that and then hang up like an idiot. “What’s going on?”

Matt hesitated. And hesitated. “Um,” he said finally. “…He got hurt.”

She raised her eyebrows even though he’d never see the expression. “What kind of hurt?”

“…Shot.”

She pressed the heel of her hand to her eyes. “And you didn’t call me?”

“I…I lost him.”

She fell dead still in the middle of her apartment.

“I’m sorry, I’m…I’m sorry. He made me go back to the church, and when I went back for him he wasn’t there. I couldn’t…I couldn’t find him, Claire, I’m sorry.”

He wasn’t making sense. “Back where? What church? _Your_ church?”

Matt didn’t answer.

“Matt,” she snapped.

Only his tattered breaths told her he was still on the line.

“Matt, talk to me, or so help me I will break into your apartment and not leave until you tell me _exactly_ what—”

“He’s still better than I am,” Matt said suddenly, and now his voice was terrifyingly emotionless, each word falling short and fast, snapping into place like magnets. “He covered his scent. I couldn’t track him. He doesn’t want to be found.”

“He got _shot_ ,” Claire said, stuck on this very important fact. But Stone was a ninja, and they had weird tricks, and he’d clearly lived alone for a long time through dangerous situations, so…maybe. “Can he—does he know how to fix—”

“I don’t know.”

“But…” Matt had tracked _her_ in the trunk of a _taxi_. “You seriously can’t find him?”

That was the wrong thing to say, so obviously and terribly wrong, but she couldn’t take it back in time. “I’m sorry, Claire. I’ll keep looking.”

_Click._

Silence.

Slowly, she lowered the phone from her ear. Wet her lips. Briefly considered charging out there into the city to join the hunt. But who was she kidding? If Matt couldn’t find him, no one could.

And if Stone had wanted to be found by her…he’d known where to go.

She didn’t often pray, not anymore. She’d seen too much suffering, and she wasn’t like Matt. She didn’t see God working through it. She saw empty hospital rooms and the faces of friends and family too drained to even cry. She saw the same evil resurface over and over, with no one able to stop it. She kept fighting because that was what _good people_ did, but she didn’t have faith.

Now, though?

She couldn’t fix this. She couldn’t even get close. So she closed her eyes and managed one weak prayer aimed at the shadowed ceiling. Then she dug out her scrubs and picked up her phone to ask if there were any shifts she could cover.

 

 

Maggie; two months later

Maggie was worried. She’d hardly heard from Matthew; he responded when she texted him, but avoided her calls half the time. When he did answer his phone, his voice was empty and exhausted.

So Maggie texted Karen, then filled a backpack with warm, flavorful food as well as lotion, anti-nausea tea, and other little things for Karen that she’d relied on (or wished she could have) when she’d been expecting Matthew.

Karen greeted her at the door, slightly out of breath from hurrying down the hallway. “He’s on the roof,” she said, round eyes staring at Maggie like Maggie could magically fix…everything. “He’s _been_ on the roof.”

Setting the backpack on the hallway table, Maggie smoothed down the front of her dress. “I’ll see what I can do.”

She climbed the stairs and found him under a cold, gray sky, sitting cross-legged at the very edge of the roof in sweatpants and a hoodie, faded from overuse. His elbows were on his knees and his head was in his hands. Listening still, but tiredly. Hopelessly. He didn’t react when she approached. He didn’t react when she sat beside him.

“How’re you holding up?” she whispered.

The wind ruffled his hair as he lifted his head minutely. “He’s still out there, Mom. I’ll hear him.”

She nodded slowly. He lapsed back into strained silence. She hunted for words. “You know…maybe, while you wait to hear him, you should—”

“Don’t,” he said flatly.

It’d been a long time since he’d rejected her advice, her guidance. It hurt, a little, but greater than the sting was the fear that this, all of this, was so far beyond her experience. The fear that she couldn’t help him with this at all.

Tentatively, unsure, she put her hand on his shoulder. When he didn’t tense or flinch, she moved her hand to the side of his chilled face, rubbing her thumb in slow circles over his cheek. She’d done it when he was a kid.

He bit his lip like he remembered. Then his head tilted, as if he’d caught some sound, but the movement was weary and unexpectant. He swallowed. “Mom?”

She waited.

“…It’s been two months.”

“I know,” she said quietly.

Finally, he turned his face towards hers, eyes full of confusion. “Why…why wouldn’t he come back?”

Helplessness clung to her like a second skin. “I don’t know.” There were only two possible answers, and both were painful. Either Stone was choosing to stay away from him…or he couldn’t come back at all.

With Matthew’s intelligence, he’d surely worked that out long ago.

She studied his face, trying to determine which conclusion he’d settled on.

He breathed in shakily. “He didn’t let me stitch him up. And he didn’t go to Claire. And he wouldn’t have gone to a hospital.” He closed his eyes. “Stick told us not to go to hospitals. People would have questions.”

She pushed her hand up into his hair and carefully did not speak.

“He always kept stuff on him, you know? For first aid. To keep himself alive. But—” His breathing quickened, shallow, wavering at the edge of uncontrolled. “But he would’ve come back, right? Right, Mom? He would’ve—he would’ve come back.”

A lump rose in her throat and she had to take a second to speak around it. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I think he would have.”

She caught barely a glimpse of his expression crumpling as he turned his face away. His Adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed again and he clasped his hands in his lap, white-knuckled.

She counted the seconds, trying to give him the time he needed to confront what he’d surely known for a while now. She kept her hand in his hair.

Finally, he tipped his head back towards the cold sky and stopped fighting. Tears slid down his cheek, through his stubble, down his throat.

Her heart broke. “Matthew, honey. Come inside?”

He shook his head.

“You need—”

“I _can’t_.” His voice broke halfway through the word.

“Matthew…he’s not coming back.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, jaw taught. Fighting again.

She held her breath.

“Mom,” he choked out suddenly, swiveling to face her.

She reached for him, tried to hold him. But they’d lost the years when she was bigger, when she could’ve sheltered him. For now, he didn’t try to stop her from embracing him. But he was stiff, muscles vibrating under her touch. When his eyes opened, they were almost dry.

They were angry.

 

 

Matt

On top of everything else, this didn’t feel right. Maggie was sad—for him, and maybe for Stone, and maybe even for Dex. And she was probably worried, worried that Matt would relapse into some dark place or do something stupid. But she wasn’t _angry_.

The disconnect between her emotions and his was….

His hands were shaking. They had been for a while; he’d been stretching his senses too far for too long, leaving him dizzy and drained. But now the trembling was also the kind that made him itch to punch something.

He hadn’t even gotten the chance to say goodbye.

There were _so many things_ he should’ve told Stone. He should’ve thanked Stone for finding him. For forcing himself into Matt’s life, misguided though it’d been at the time. He should’ve thanked Stone for being there for him, in a thousand different ways. Training him and testifying for him, fighting together, watching over Ella and Foggy—who would’ve ended up dead were it not for Stone’s vigilance. And Karen. Stone had been a safe place for her when Matt couldn’t be there. Matt should’ve thanked him for that.

And above all, Matt should’ve thanked Stone for being not just another of Stick’s pupils but a _brother_.

Maybe he knew? He must’ve known, right?

That didn’t matter. Matt should’ve _said_ it.

It was too late now, because Stone would’ve come back. If he could’ve.

Matt had known for a while, really. But he hadn’t been brave enough to face the truth. Now, even though Maggie couldn’t really understand, at least she was here. And she cared.

He finally, finally pulled his senses back to something more manageable. His hearing centered on her heartbeat next to him. “Stick would say he went soft,” he said thickly. “He started caring about me and it made him vulnerable. I… _I_ made him vulnerable.”

Matt set the example. Matt made Stone believe that people like them could have friends, have family. Have anything more than allies. But, apparently, Matt was the exception to the rule.

“Honey, Stone got to have real relationships, and not just with you. Isn’t that—”

“Real relationships cut short,” he bit out.

“Better than nothing at all.”

“Is it?” Matt closed his eyes. “I mean…I mean…Dex. Stone shouldn’t have tried to help Dex.” His hands curled into fists. “I should’ve known better. I should’ve known Dex wouldn’t change. I shouldn’t’ve let Dex get anywhere _near_ Stone.”

She wet her lips before answering. “Dex isn’t evil, Matthew. He didn’t choose to shoot Stone. He couldn’t have. He didn’t know where he was. That’s not your fault and it’s not Dex’s fault either.”

Matt snapped his head up. “Whose, then? Stone’s?”

“It was no one’s fault. It was—”

He shot to his feet so fast that her fingers tugged in his hair. “Don’t say it was an _accident_. I can’t—I can’t _handle_ that.” Accidents were things like chemicals in his eyes, not…not this. Stone deserved someone to blame. Stone deserved _better_.

Maggie was wrong. Dex was the reason. Dex was the one who stole Father Lantom and Matt had tried so hard to move past that, to dig up enough forgiveness within himself to try to help Dex, because wasn’t that what Father Lantom would’ve wanted?

But Dex just couldn’t stop himself. He’d tried to kill Karen and Foggy and Ella and now he’d killed Stone and maybe some people could change, but not Dex.

His fingers clenched into fists. Hand-to-hand, he could beat Dex. Hand-to-hand was better anyway. Slower. Both of them would feel each and every hit.

“Matthew?” she said worriedly.

He deliberately straightened his fingers. “Sorry.”

“What are you trying to apologize for?”

He stood up. “We should go in. It’s cold.”

She didn’t say anything to that. Her silence was a threat. He hurried back into the apartment and tried to ignore Karen’s obvious relief. He shouldn’t have let himself get so carried away when he’d known the truth. He shouldn’t have worried her so much. He should have just solved the problem as soon as—

No.

Stone was dead. Going after Dex wouldn’t solve anything.

“Matt,” Karen began.

He tensed. “Don’t. I—I’m _begging_ you. Don’t.”

“Okay,” she said simply.

Maggie stayed until late, regaling Karen with stories of when Matt was a baby. He wasn’t fooled. They were both keeping watch over him. He sat by the window and tried not to think about life and death and heaven and hell.

And eventually Maggie left, and Karen pulled him into their bedroom, and he asked if she missed… _him_ …because they’d been friends, too, and Matt was trying to do a better job of checking in with her. They sat on the bed with Frank between them. But she started talking, nonstop about memories and wishes, and he belatedly realized he wasn’t ready for this. And he was too much of a coward to tell her. So he tried to look like he was listening while he thought about anything—literally anything—else. He found himself thinking about what it would take to break into the jail that was holding Dex, and he jerked himself back to the present.

“It’s okay,” Karen said sadly. “I know you weren’t listening.”

He at least owed her honesty. “I…can’t. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I get it.” She sighed, and then her voice tightened. “Just promise me that you won’t go out tonight.”

He wrestled back the initial defiance, the ugly snarl of _don’t tell me what to do_. “Yeah. ’Course.” He thought for a moment. “Is there any other way I can…?”

“Hold me?”

Nudging Frank down towards their feet, he pulled her close. She tucked her head under his jaw and curled her fingers into his shirt. He felt the smaller heart beating rapidly between them, felt the tiny twitches of movement that occasionally caused Karen to shift in response. He tightened his arms around her—around both of them—and ran the ends of her hair through his fingers.

And it was good. It was good to keep his hands occupied until she fell asleep.

 

 

Foggy

He couldn’t sleep, and counting sheep never really worked for him anyway. He looked at Marci next to him, beautiful in the moonlight, and felt a tug of envy at the peace on her face. Rubbing at his eyes, Foggy finally swung his legs out of bed.

Maybe there was a reason he was awake.

Unplugging his phone from the charger, he padded into the living room. Between the fact that Foggy had needed to focus on defending Dex from the get-go (he’d been scrambling to get ahold of the old PD’s notes from before Vanessa sprung Dex from jail the first time, and he’d been trying to piece together a diminished capacity defense, and it really was Frank Castle all over again) and the fact that Matt hadn’t exactly been easy to reach in the fallout, Foggy hadn’t had the chance to check up on his best friend.

Well, that changed tonight.

He thumbed through his contacts and hit _call_ , but a second later he was shocked to hear a muffled, robotic voice repeating his name…right outside the window.

Hanging up, Foggy ran to shove the window open, and yep—there was Matt on the fire escape, holding his phone with a strange mix of guilt and bewilderment on his bare face. He wasn’t wearing black, just a jacket over a dull gray hoodie and jeans. “Buddy?”

Matt coughed. “Hey, Fogs.”

“Dude, get in here. You’ll freeze your nuts off.”

Matt crawled through, shoes landing heavily on the living room floor. He stuck his phone in his pocket. “Sorry, I wasn’t…” He trailed off.

“What were you even doing out there?”

Wetting his lips, Matt didn’t answer.

Worry pinged in Foggy’s chest. “Okay. Well, I’m gonna make tea, all right?”

Matt trailed uncertainly after him towards the kitchen. “Not—”

“Not in the microwave, I know. You snob.” Starting up the stove, Foggy busied himself filling a kettle with water. Matt would speak when he was ready.

Sure enough, Matt sat on one of the stools, tracing his finger absently over some pattern or other in the counter. “Thanks.”

Foggy decided to push a little. “For the tea?”

“For letting me in.”

“Well, the only superhero who can rock the popsicle thing is Captain America, so I didn’t have much choice.”

Matt raised his eyebrows, mildly rebuking. “You can’t call Captain America a popsicle.”

“Sue me.” Foggy set the kettle on the stove. Then he settled back, leaning against the counter with his hands in his pockets. “So, I should probably give you a rundown on the tea options, right? Since we have a _lot_ of options. Well, like half of them have caffeine, which you probably don’t need right now. Unless…are you going somewhere else after this?”

Matt’s jaw worked wordlessly for a moment. He cleared his throat and lowered his eyes. He picked at the counter. “No,” he said at last.

Huh. That was a lot of buildup for a very simple answer. Narrowing his eyes, Foggy waited.

Matt kept his eyes downward and finally elaborated. “I’m here because I need you to stop me.”

“Stop you?” Foggy echoed carefully.

“I mean—I mean—” Matt shook his head, maybe at himself. “Can I just stay here, please?”

“Of _course_.” Foggy crossed the small space until there was just the counter between them. “Anything. Well, not anything, actually. I can’t let you eat the chocolate covered almonds in the fridge, sadly, even though they could probably cure whatever’s going on here, because Marci would literally murder me—”

Matt stiffened.

“What can I do to help?”

Matt looked like he’d rather shrink into the void, but he seemed to brace himself for something. He glanced up, eyes flitting nervously around Foggy’s face. “Fogs, I…” He took a breath. “I wanna kill Dex.”

“What, seriously?” Foggy blurted out.

Matt just dropped his eyes back to the counter.

Oh. Okay. That was…not really what Foggy was expecting to hear out of his best friend’s very Catholic mouth, and he had no _idea_ what to say. He rapidly sorted through and rejected like five different options in his head before settling on a useless, “Oh?”

Matt raised his eyebrows, darkly amused. “Oh,” he repeated.

“I mean, that’s, uh…wow.” Foggy shifted his weight. “What are you planning on, uh, on doing with that?”

“Nothing,” Matt said quietly. “That’s why I’m here.”

“Oh,” Foggy said again, uselessly. _Think, Nelson. Don’t ruin this._ “Well, uh—” The shrieking of the kettle interrupted him; he jumped.

Matt flinched, one hand over his ear.

“Sorry!” Foggy jerked the kettle off the stove. “Sorry, man. Um…what kind of tea did you say you wanted?”

“I didn’t.”

“Chamomile it is, then,” Foggy decided. Good for calming down and going to sleep, which made it good anti-murder tea. He fussed with the kettle for a bit. Then, taking a deep breath, he turned back to Matt. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

His mouth twisted wryly. “Not particularly.”

Foggy nodded. “Okay.” He kept thinking. “Do you want to drop his case?”

Matt looked like he hadn’t considered that. Knowing Matt, he probably hadn’t. “No,” he said.

“You sure?”

He hesitated. “No,” he admitted.

“Yeah,” Foggy said, unsurprised by the truth but very surprised by the honesty. “Well, you don’t have to decide that now, but the option stays on the table.” He racked his brains for something else to do or talk about while the tea brewed.

“Foggy,” Matt said softly, like he could _hear_ Foggy thinking too hard. “It’s okay. You don’t have to do anything. I just…” He ran a hand partway through his hair and left it there, which had the convenient effect of hiding his face with his arm. “I think I just needed to be here.”

Maybe so, but Foggy wasn’t gonna let him sit there with nothing to distract him from, well, whatever he was struggling with. Maybe he was here because he’d already made up his mind that yeah, no, killing Dex was a _terrible_ idea for about a thousand reasons—but he felt guilty for even considering it? That would be one thing. Or maybe he was here because he was still very much in the middle of arguing with himself over whether to do it. Which would be…Foggy’s stomach flipped uneasily. “New plan,” Foggy announced.

And that was how they ended up squished together on Foggy’s couch, holding piping hot mugs of tea with Matt’s socked toes stuck under Foggy’s legs because they were still too cold after however long he’d spent lurking outside. The TV was on at an impossibly low volume so as not to wake Marci up while Foggy narrated whatever crap was on. Matt’s head somehow ended up on Foggy’s shoulder, although he clearly wasn’t relaxed, wasn’t about to fall asleep or anything. No, this closeness was an intentional choice. He didn’t seem all that interested in following the plot of the weird TV show they’d found either, but he _did_ seem highly interested in Foggy’s voice, so Foggy made sure to not stop talking no matter what. It was a gift of his.

The TV droned on and on and neither of them slept at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who are curious, the chocolate covered almonds Foggy is referring to these: https://www.amazon.com/Trader-Joes-Turbinado-Chocolate-Almonds/dp/B007T43CNM.


	57. I'd be Lying if I Said that I was Fine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "That's Just Life" by Memphis May Fire (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Sec2kOSDBU).
> 
> Soooo I know I'm very behind in replying to comments and I LOVE your comments, they're like chocolate, but I'm also trying really hard not to spoil anything in these last few chapters, so...mmmmph.
> 
> Also there's still angst, but also, I think, a hint of hope? Enough to justify posting it on Christmas, anyway. Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate and to everyone else, have an extra incredible Wednesday!

Matt

When he slunk back home at about six-thirty the next morning, hoping that maybe he’d feel less like murdering people under the warmth of the sun (it was partly true), Karen greeted him at the door.

“What the hell?” she demanded, bristling.

Ah. Not a greeting, then. An ambush. He fumbled to get the door locked behind him. “What?”

“You told me you weren’t going out last night! The _one thing_ I asked of you—”

“I didn’t,” he interrupted. “I mean, not…not with the mask, or anything.” Which she should know, if she’d seen the note he’d left behind. Or if she’d looked in the closet.

“You don’t exactly need the mask anymore, do you?”

“I went to see Foggy,” he said quietly.

She deflated. “Oh.”

“…I left you a note. By the bed.” Possibly it wasn’t entirely legible since handwriting wasn’t exactly his strength, but still.

“Oh. I didn’t see it.” Her body temperature rose slightly. Embarrassed, maybe. Or guilty. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” It wasn’t like he made a habit of leaving notes when he went out at night. Maybe he should consider a better way to communicate. He started shuffling down the hall, trying not to yawn. What day was it, Saturday? Thank God. He didn’t have to go anywhere, and maybe if he slept now, with the sounds of the city bustling in the background, the nightmares wouldn’t be too bad.

He stopped halfway into the rest of the apartment. Karen was still by the door, arms wrapped around herself. From the sounds of her breathing, it seemed like she was…staring at the door?

He turned around. “Karen?”

“Sorry.” She shook herself. “Thinking.”

“Can I…” This sounded so dumb. He persevered anyway. “Can I talk to you?”

She paused just long enough to show that she understood the significance of what he was asking. “Yeah, Matt. What is it?”

He just stood there, trying to find the words and trying not to overthink them, and failing at both goals.

“C’mere.” She set her hands high on his shoulders and steered him to the couch, then curled up next to them. Frank wasted no time to jump on the cushions on the other side of Matt, nosing at his cheek. Matt affectionally splayed his hand flat over the top of her head and squashed down until her chin rested on his thigh. Her hindquarters gave a surprised wiggle, but eventually the rest of her settled down. Karen tilted her head, clearly studying him, but didn’t say anything else to prompt him or push him.

He took a deep breath. “I went to see Foggy because…since I realized that, uh, that…that Stone c-can’t come back…” He dropped his gaze, which did nothing. “I keep thinking about Dex.”

“Oh,” she said, so softly that it was obvious she understood what he really meant. She twined her fingers gently through his hair. “I was wondering if that would happen.”

Something in his stomach clenched up at that. He wasn’t even sure why he felt suddenly so upset, except that…it was like murder was this thing painted on his forehead that everyone else could see, like he was stained or tainted.

There was something else, too. Something just as shameful. A sense of failure. Defeat. Because why was he still struggling with this? He should be _better_ by now.

“Hey.” Karen scooted closer, which he would’ve thought an impossibility. “Listen. This…this feeling you have, it’s not something you have to act on. You know that.”

That didn’t matter. He’d still felt it. He’d still _thought_ it. And he remembered enough of the Sermon on the Mount to know that hatred was the same as murder in God’s eyes, so did it even matter that he hadn’t acted?

He closed his eyes, smelling the ghost of Kyle Conway’s blood.

“Matt? Tell me what else you’re thinking.”

He’d rather not. Really, he’d rather start apologizing, because that was one of the few things guaranteed to throw Karen completely off. She’d start insisting that he didn’t have to apologize because he hadn’t actually done anything, and he’d argue that he was actually apologizing for making her and Foggy deal with this part of him, and she’d say that was a stupid thing to apologize for, albeit not in so many words.

But that wouldn’t really be honest. And so it wouldn’t really be fair.

Still, it wasn’t as if Karen could join him in discussing the spiritual implications of…everything he was struggling with. He exhaled slowly. “I don’t…I don’t want…” This was going to be difficult no matter what. “I don’t want that to be what you and Foggy think about when…when you think of me.”

“We don’t,” she said immediately.

He opened his eyes and aimed them at the ceiling. “You sure about that?”

“Do you know what I really think of when I think of you?”

“Don’t—you don’t have to compliment me right now. I’m fine.”

Suddenly, her hand was on his cheek, turning his head like she could force him to stare at her. “ _Listen_. You are…so smart and brave and _kind_ , and selfless to the most ridiculous degree, and you work so hard to do the right thing that sometimes in comparison it makes me feel…actually, you probably don’t wanna hear that, shut up, I just…”

He opened his mouth.

She put her finger over his lips. “You love me like no one else ever has, you know that? And I’m just trying to…figure out how to love you back the same way.” She leaned closer, resting her forehead against his. “And I know,” she whispered, “that this…this thing you struggle with, it’s not you. Not really. So when I think of you, I need you to know that this other thing is so far removed that it’s…it’s in a completely different story.”

Her heart beat steady and true.

“I’m proud you talked to Foggy,” she murmured. “And I want you to keep talking to me, and your mom and your priest and whoever else will help. Just… _please_ believe that none of us are judging you, all right? Least of all me.”

He reached for her hand just to feel her soft skin. “I’ll try. I’ll try to believe that.” Then he pulled away and lifted his chin. “I—I need to tell Claire.”

Karen stroked his hair back from his forehead. “You sure you’re up for it?”

“She needs to know.” They’d both lost something, but the losses were _different_ , and he didn’t know how to deal with that. And he wasn’t ready to talk about it, not like this. But she needed to know. And she needed to hear it from him.

(And he needed to do something.)

“Okay.” Karen’s voice was sad, but she leaned closer and kissed his forehead. “I’m proud of you.”

 

 

Claire

Emiliano had left. That much was clear. And it hurt, obviously. But mostly, Claire was angry. She just wasn’t sure whether she was angrier at him or at herself. And everything was too raw for her to figure that out right now, so she was distracting herself with extra shifts and TV shows and helping her mom run random errands.

It wasn’t working.

Claire was just letting herself into her apartment, glancing at the couch and wondering how much longer it would be before she’d be able to look at it without remembering his touch, when her phone buzzed against her hip. She fished it out of her pocket to read a text from Matt.

_Can I come over?_

Right, it was late enough for him to be out. _Yes,_ she texted back. _How bad?_

He didn’t answer.

Perfect. Swearing to herself, she got out her kit and all the stolen hospital supplies she’d squirreled away. When he didn’t show up after five minutes, she tried calling him. Voicemail.

She went to the window to peer out. Not that she’d see his black shadow unless he wanted her to. But he’d better be almost dying, if he was gonna text her like that and then not pick up when she called to make sure he was still breathing. They’d _talked_ about this.

Suddenly, a dark shape landed on her fire escape. She flinched reflexively, then pushed the window open. Matt hesitated a second before slipping inside.

“What’s wrong?” she demanded.

He slowly peeled away his mask, but kept his face turned away as he slid into her apartment. It was still kind of dark, but she couldn’t see any obvious injuries, just some light bruising on his cheek, so what…?

“Are you okay?” she insisted, reaching to put her hands on his flank the way she always did to check for stab wounds or broken ribs.

But he stepped to the side, evading her touch, and his answer was so quiet she barely heard it. “I’m fine.”

“What’s going on?”

“I just…” He broke off, pressing his lips together as his eyes suddenly glistened with held-back tears.

“Oh, Matt.” Her instinct to comfort and heal took over and she moved closer again, this time reaching for his face.

He sidestepped once more and actually held out his hand to stop her as he turned away. “Sorry, I’m sorry. Just…give me a second.”

It wasn’t an injury, then. It was something else, something bad. She wanted to scream at the universe because hadn’t Matt Murdock been through enough by now?

And why would he come _here_ , to her, if there were no physical wounds for her to treat?

She chewed uncertainly on her lip. “You should at least sit down.”

His lips moved around the word _yeah_ , but he didn’t make a sound. He sat down anyway.

Bracing herself, she sat on the couch beside him, leaving space between them but hoping her presence would be a comfort. “Wanna talk about it?”

He tried to take a deep breath, but it was shaky and he stopped halfway through.

“It’s okay,” she soothed, taking a risk and setting her hand over his. He didn’t react. “We can talk about something else.” She paused, and when he still didn’t respond, she tried to sound lighthearted. “Like why Emiliano hasn’t texted me back. Or has he been avoiding you, too? I get that it’s part of your whole Mysterious Ninja thing you’ve got going on, but you should coach him up a little on—” She cut herself off because Matt suddenly squeezed his eyes shut. “Matt?”

A tear rolled down his cheek.

She’d never, not once, seen him cry. Not any of the times when they’d walked in and out of each other’s lives, not whenever she healed him, not even when she’d taken care of him while he fought the nightmares from devil’s hell. She felt sick. “It’s okay,” she whispered even as her mind raced to figure out what was wrong. “We’ll get through this. Do you want me to…call someone?”

 _Why_ had he come to _her?_

“Claire,” he said tightly, and then he opened his eyes so she could see his unshed tears. “Stone’s dead.”

The world shrank to the dark room and froze.

“I…” He closed his eyes again and wiped at his cheeks again and again, then finally gave up and hunched forward over his knees, burying his face in his hands. “I—I had—someone had to tell you.”

No. It didn’t make sense. He’d been gone, yeah, but that was what ninjas did. They disappeared, and then they came back. And she’d seen Emiliano fight. He’d fought the Hand for years, and she’d seen _them_ fight.

He couldn’t be dead. He was like Matt. Nothing could stop either of them, not for long, not really.

“I’m sorry,” Matt was saying, voice cracked. “I’m so sorry, Claire—”

“How?” she croaked at last.

“We—we—” His hands slid up to twist in his own hair. “He saved me, Claire. Dex was—”

“Stop,” she managed. She didn’t want more details than that. Emiliano died saving people; that was enough for her, for now. Maybe someday she’d want the whole story but right now she thought it might shatter them both. Her throat tightened. Something was wrapping itself around her neck, her chest.

Matt made a sound like he was trying to smother a sob with a grunt, and she could see the tension in his arms like corded steel as he fought for control.

She hated to see it and she wanted comfort too, so she scooted towards him and threw her arms around his neck, pulling him close.

It broke him.

Which felt like a good thing.

He was shaking; his hands gripped the back of her shirt like he was afraid she’d try to run away when he pressed his face against her shoulder and cried without holding back. Stroking her hand through his hair, she focused on breathing evenly and tried not to think about the future that had slipped from her grasp when she wasn’t even looking.

But there wasn’t very much else to think about. By the time Matt stopped trembling, she felt the tears welling in her own eyes. Tears for herself, yes, but also for Matt, who’d found a brother only to lose him, and for Emiliano, who’d found new life only to….

Matt pulled back just enough to sit up straighter. His hands were gentle now as he held her. He was still broken, but he felt solid enough that she leaned against him, let him carry some of the weight, and eventually forced her ragged breathing to slow down enough to match the pattern he was rubbing against her back.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

“Don’t—” She sat up, rubbing at her eyes. “Don’t say that. It’ll just make it worse for both of us.”

To her relief, he didn’t argue. He also seemed to run out of other things to say, instead reaching out to cup her neck with his warm hand, rubbing his thumb over the spot where she realized she was clenching her jaw. Unexpected in terms of comforting gestures, but it…worked.

 

 

Dex

They’d told him what happened when they first brought him in. He couldn’t remember. He’d thought, for a few precious hours, that maybe they were lying.

But then Nelson had shown up and spelled it all out. Turned out they were telling the truth after all.

And about a week later, he’d come by with Matt and one look at Matt’s face had told Dex everything he needed to know.

He’d killed—

Easier not to think.

He fell into a rhythm. That was one thing jail had going for it, especially now that it was his…third time, doing this? Was that right? He couldn’t remember. Didn’t want to try. But jail had rhythm. Predictability, sometimes. That was nice.

It was also boring. Dex tried to distract himself by distracting himself.

(It didn’t work. He kept wondering how it had happened. Had he shot Stone straight through the heart? Maybe he’d bled out right then. Maybe it was fast. Maybe Stone barely felt anything. But maybe not. Maybe Dex shot him somewhere else. Or threw something. Maybe it’d taken Stone a long time to die.)

One month into jail, Dex banged his forehead against the cold wall of his cell and wondered how long it would be before Nelson came back for him. (Or Matt, but Matt rarely came. Dex wasn’t even sure if Matt was his lawyer. Probably not. But then what was Nelson doing?) That was all he was living for by this point, though. If Nelson hadn’t taken his case, if he’d been left with a stranger, some other lawyer in it for the spectacle….

But it was stupid. What was the point if Nelson and Matt were just going to leave? Which of course the would. Eventually. Everyone did.

Dex would drive them off now just to get ahead of it, except that even _thinking_ that made him feel like he was having a heart attack.

And then, after Dex had been in jail for about two months, Matt suddenly stopped coming entirely.

So, you know. This was it.

It _hurt_ and it was so lonely and Dex realized there were any number of things he could use to do the job here in his cell. There weren’t supposed to be, but Fisk was right when he’d said Dex had special talents.

At that moment, but before Dex could reach for anything, a CO opened the door to his cell. “Inmate. Visitor.”

Dex could easily fight the guard off just for _five seconds_ of peace, just enough to do what he had to.

“C’mon,” the guard said impatiently, drawing out the cuffs to escort him through the jail. “I know she’s a nun, but something tells me you don’t wanna piss her off.”

A nun?

Sister Maggie?

Why would she….

She’d come back for him.

Dex held out his wrists for the cuffs.

 

 

Matt

There was one other place he needed to visit. To be fair, it didn’t have to be today. Maybe it _shouldn’t_ be today. He was already exhausted. Wrung out. Maybe it wasn’t fair to Ella to have this conversation when he felt like so empty. But selfishly, he’d rather get it over with.

Micah opened the door at his knock and immediately asked, “What happened?”

Oh, did Matt look that bad? He resisted the urge to scrub at his face. “I need to talk to her.”

Micah’s posture indicated that he already knew that whatever Matt had to say wasn’t good. “What happened?” he repeated.

Matt wet his lips, unsure how much he wanted to share with Micah. Micah might have developed a begrudging respect for…for…but it wasn’t like they were close. As her father, Micah probably deserved to know the general idea, but did he have to know details? Did _Matt_ have to be the one to share them?

Then again, it was probably selfish to make Ella tell him, and Micah would better be able to comfort her if he knew the story. Matt just wasn’t sure he had the emotional capacity to keep talking about it like this, was the thing.

He had, frankly, gotten nowhere close to figuring out how to respond when Micah took the decision more or less out of his hands. Stepping fully outside where birds chirped in blissful ignorance, Micah closed the door behind them. “Are you all right?”

That was…not the question Matt was expecting. A lump rose in his throat. He wanted to deny the truth, but what would that accomplish? After all, Micah had proven himself to be…well. He tried to clear his throat. “Uh,” he managed. “Not so much.”

“What happened?”

Matt sniffed. “One of the, uh…one of the people who was at your house, for the attack? He, uh…he died.”

“Oh.” Micah was quiet for a moment. “Friend of yours?”

Matt blinked. “…Yeah. Yeah, he was.”

Something changed in Micah’s heartbeat. Like he was cycling through those who’d been at their house that night, realizing who Matt was talking about. But he just said, “I’m sorry.” And reached out and set a warm hand on Matt’s shoulder.

The warmth of the gesture somehow caught Matt off guard. He found himself leaning into it. “It’s just…Ella knows him pretty well, actually, so I…I thought she should know.”

“Pretty well?” Micah’s voice lost none of its warmth, but there was a slight protective tone underneath.

Matt closed his eyes behind his glasses. “When I found her in the tunnels—the first time, before you knew me? He was with me. Helped her. She gave him a picture she drew, afterwards. To thank him. And he’s been…he’s been keeping you guys safe.”

Micah lowered his voice. “How upset do you think she’ll be?”

Matt hesitated. “Whatever her favorite comfort activities are will probably be warranted.”

“…Right.”

“I’m sorry. It’s not fair, with what she’s already been through.”

Micah’s hand was still on Matt’s shoulder. “Sounds to me like it isn’t fair to either of you.”

It struck Matt that what he heard in Micah’s voice now was not pity. Matt wasn’t sure he could even call it sympathy. It was just simple sadness, like Matt’s grief was valid enough on its own that Micah could draw close and share in it. He nodded brusquely, hoping he could get inside and get this over with before he did something stupid. Like cry more. (Somehow, he’d rather cry in front of Ella than Micah if it came down to it.)

But when he tried to step past Micah, Micah’s hand tightened on his shoulder and suddenly Micah’s not unformidable body was bearing down on him, and Matt found himself enveloped in an embrace. Matt could escape in a heartbeat if he wanted to, but for some reason he…didn’t. And Micah didn’t let go. In fact, something told Matt that he _wouldn’t_ let go, not until Matt moved first.

When Matt finally pulled back, it didn’t feel like running. He gave a small nod to communicate that he was ready.

Micah held open the door. “Would it help, do you think, if I sat in with you?”

Matt’s first instinct was to say no; he didn’t want to be distracted by Micah’s reactions when he needed to focus on Ella’s. but he reminded himself that Ella wasn’t like he was growing up; she had a support system. A good one. Why shouldn’t she use it? “Yeah,” he said. “I think that’ll help.”

“Good.” Micah sounded both approving and relieved; Matt wondered what would’ve happened if Matt had said no. “She’s in the dining room, supposedly doing homework.”

“Supposedly?” Matt commented, following him into the house.

“Mostly she’s been talking to Maeva, again, about the, uh, Great House Attack. As she’s calling it. You know, I don’t want her to go through anything like that again, but I can’t help imagining how boring she’ll find the rest of her life after all this.”

“Maybe she’ll go work for the Avengers.”

Micah stopped dead.

“What?”

“I…well, I’m sure she could handle it, she’d be great, but…” He gave his head a slight shake. “What a terrifying thought. Anyway.” Coming up to the dining room, he rapped his knuckles on the doorframe. “Hey, Ella, can we—”

“Matt!” She almost fell off the chair in her rush to throw her arms around Matt’s waist.

“Wow, kiddo, I love you, too,” Micah said dryly.

“Daddy,” she said with deep exasperation, not letting go of Matt.

He ran his hand over her curls. “How are you doing?”

“Good!” With that, she started chattering about the so-called Great House Attack. Reluctant to douse her enthusiasm (and hoping he could steal some of her joy for herself, if only for a moment), he listened patiently.

Micah was the one to finally interrupt. “Ella, buttercup, let’s go in the living room, okay? Matt needs to talk to you.”

Maeva popped her head out of the kitchen, concern in her voice. “Is something—” Micah must’ve sent her some kind of signal, because she quickly cut herself off “I’ll make hot chocolate, all right?”

Normally, that sort of thing might trigger delighted yelling from Ella. But (by necessity), she always was good at reading a room, and apparently not even Maeva and Micah’s spousal signaling was enough to keep her from realizing something was wrong. She pulled slightly away from Matt. “What’s going on?”

Not for the first time, Matt wished he weren’t blind so he could see if Micah was giving him some kind of look. As it was, he had to guess. Though Micah asked to be present, he so far hadn’t made any indications that he didn’t trust Matt to lead this conversation. Stroking his hand through her hair, he tried to smile gently. “I have something I need to tell you.”

“It’s bad,” she said immediately. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, Ella,” he admitted. “Come sit with me?”

She let go of him enough to allow him to walk, but she grasped his hand, crushing his fingers in her smaller grip and sticking close to his side as he led her into the living room. When he sat on the couch, she squished herself onto the very same cushion, just shy of falling into his lap, and tilted her face up to stare at him; he could feel her warm breath on his face. Micah settled wordlessly onto an armchair across from them.

“So, um,” Ella began nervously. “What’s going on?”

Matt cleared his throat, trying to figure out where to even begin. The easy thing would be to blame Dex. But given all that Stone invested in Dex, it felt disrespectful to start there. “Well, there was…there was an accident.”

His own voice echoed in his head: _Don’t say it was an accident!_ But really, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it, at least, the product of a thousand factors beyond Matt’s ability to understand or anticipate?

“Are you okay?” She reached out, one hand on his arm, the other flat on his chest. He wasn’t sure why she seemed to think those particular areas were more injury-prone.

“I’m not hurt. But, listen, Ella…” He heard her breathing hitch and was suddenly immensely grateful that he couldn’t see her anxious expression. “There was a fight. And Stone died.”

Her gasp was tiny and her hands withdrew to clasp over her mouth. He immediately tasted the salt of her tears.

Did he do this wrong? Or was that reaction inevitable? Matt wanted to keep talking, just to give her something else to pay attention to besides her own mounting grief, but he had no idea which specific facts would actually be helpful for her to hear.

“H-how?” she managed at last.

Again, he wished he could see Micah’s face, just for some guidance here other than Micah’s thumping heartbeat. Matt cleared his throat again. “He saved my life.”

“ _How?_ ”

He made a conscious effort not to clench his hands or his jaw. She didn’t need to deal with the guilt he was still fighting. “We were attacked. Stone, he took a bullet that was meant for me.”

She wiped furiously at her face. “But h-how—”

Did she have to keep asking questions? “Ella, maybe we should take a break. We don’t need to—”

“ _Tell me what happened._ ”

He turned his face towards Micah, but Micah offered no guidance. Left on his own, Matt rapidly thought through what he knew of Ella, weighing her resilience and unending compassion against her youth and every other horrible thing that had already happened to her. “It was Dex,” he said at last, reluctantly. “He’s had a lot of trauma, and sometimes that makes him forget where he is or what he’s doing. When that happened, he didn’t remember that Stone and I are on his side.”

Sniffling, she drew her knees up to her chest and locked her arms around them. “Did it hurt?”

Each new question picked at the wound that hadn’t even started to heal. “Maybe. I…don’t know, Ella.”

“How d’you not know?” she asked, words muffled by her knees.

This had to be some kind of penance. But no, that implied that he was to blame. Shoving thoughts of guilt and penance aside, he addressed the question as calmly as he could. “I, uh, wasn’t with him. When, uh…when it happened.”

She raised her head, confused, and latching onto the confusion, surely because it was easier to deal with than everything else, like if she could just nail down the sequence of events she could have some kind of closure. Ha. “I thought you were fighting together.”

Matt’s chest sort of locked up the instant he tried to think about how to explain that he’d left. He’d left Stone behind and never found him again.

“Ella,” Micah said gently from his corner. “You don’t need to know all the details.”

Thank _God_ for Micah.

“But…” Ella’s voice wobbled.

“Come here,” Matt whispered. Pulling her into his lap, he gently wiped at her tears. “I miss him, too.”

“He was trying,” she whispered back.

“I know. And he knew that, before—”

“But _Dex_ was trying, too,” she said, and a new sob caught in her chest.

Matt really hadn’t expected her to be distraught over Dex as well. They’d only had one conversation. But he wasn’t actually surprised, was he? She never put limits on the love she had to give. “I know. He didn’t mean to…to do it.”

“But—but—” The words got swallowed up as she started crying harder, everything welling up until she gave up and just buried her face against his chest. Holding her closer, he stroked her hair.

If he’d just stayed out of her life, or if he’d backed off as soon as she was safely placed with Maeva and Micah—

No.

If he’d just taken care of her on his own, without getting Stone all mixed up in her life—

No.

Resting his cheek on the top of her head, he concentrated on taking each accusative thought captive. Maeva tiptoed into the room, setting mugs of hot chocolate on the coffee table and setting a box of tissues on the end table next to Matt before backing off to sit next to Micah.

No sooner had she sat down then Ella suddenly scrambled out of Matt’s arms. She dashed across the room and threw herself at her parents. Matt felt cold wherever her warm body had been pressed to his, but…he couldn’t deny that it was better this way. He’d have to go home eventually, and Ella’s grief had only just begun.

She’d need people she could trust to see her tears.

 

 

He felt heavy, drained, when he finally opened the door to the apartment. He stepped inside and just stood there for a moment, not sure whether he should prop his cane against the wall first, put his glasses on the hallway table, hang up his jacket, or close the door behind him. Unable to decide, he did nothing.

Karen’s footsteps approached the other end of the wall. “How did it—oh.”

Startling back to the present, he quickly shut the door. “It was fine. I’m fine.”

She just hummed and leaned against the wall while he fumbled to put all his things in the right place. Maybe he should just sleep? If Karen was there, and Frank’s soft warmth, maybe there wouldn’t be any nightmares.

Suddenly, Karen hunched over with a breathless gasp. He was at her side in an instant, running his hands up her arms. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

She held her breath; a second later, she relaxed into an exhale. “I think…” She inhaled slowly. “I think something just kicked my lungs.”

Matt frowned, relieved at the lack of imminent danger but frustrated that this was, apparently, a problem he couldn’t fix. “The kid?”

“Tell your kid that my uterus is not an appropriate place for parkour.”

“I…don’t think you understand what parkour is.”

“Gymnastics, whatever.” She walked a bit stiffly over to the couch and lowered herself to sit. “You know, we should _probably_ start thinking about names.”

He followed, sitting beside her and resting his hand on her neck to massage the tension there. “I’m thinking I’ll call the kid The Kid indefinitely.”

“Don’t start. I should’ve known your terrible sense of humor would just get worse with fatherhood.”

Fatherhood. Would he ever get used to that? “Penelope,” he said quietly.

Her breathing hitched. “What?”

“Penelope. After your mom. If…if you want.”

“I would’ve thought you’d want to name her after your mom.”

“The alliteration’s a bit much, in my experience,” he said lightly.

She swallowed. “Thank you, Matt.”

Penelope Murdock. It’d been in his head for months now, long before they confirmed that they were having a girl. He’d just…forgotten, what with everything happening recently. Been too focused on the loss to remember what they still had.

“Grace,” Karen said abruptly.

He tipped his head to the side. “What?”

“For her middle name. Like your mom’s.”

“My mom’s middle name is Grace?” He had no idea. “Huh. That’s…appropriate.”

“Penelope Grace Murdock,” Karen murmured, and Matt fell instantly in love with the way her voice wrapped so tenderly around those words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3


	58. Triumph and Tragedy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "I Have This Hope" by Tenth Avenue North (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBg9jHQtE44).
> 
> Hi! This chapter hasn't been edited as much as usual because I'm going to a youth conference without internet for a few days and wanted to post something before I disappear. I'll smooth it out when I get back. :)

Karen

Having a name changed things. Maybe it shouldn’t, it wasn’t like anything had changed with the fetus. But it _did_. And she couldn’t help wondering if maybe she and Matt had known subconsciously that it would. Maybe that was why they hadn’t found a name sooner. Because it kept getting more real with each new milestone: hearing the heartbeat, the ultrasound, noticing the bump, discovering the sex. But that was still all…biological.

A _name_ was personal.

“Penelope Grace Murdock,” Karen whispered to herself, just to hear how it sounded again.

Matt tilted his head where he sat across from her, though he kept his eyes closed. “What, did she do something?”

“I’m just getting used to the sound.”

“Focus,” Matt said, clearly trying to sound stern, but the softness in his eyes completely gave him away. “Sit up straighter.”

Rolling her eyes, Karen adjusted her posture slightly, hoping that would please him. It was just hard to sit up straight on the bed. He usually meditated on the floor like a spartan weirdo, but she’d put her foot down, so now they were sitting across from each other on the silk sheets. He’d opened the blinds so the sun could stream in to warm them, much to Frank’s pleasure. The dog was sprawled on her back beside them.

It was perfect.

Too perfect, probably. “I’m still not convinced I’ll be able to do this through contractions,” she said, despite Matt’s insistence that the practice would make labor easier. How would he know, anyway?

His eyes cracked open. “I could try to annoy you so you can practice ignoring disruptive stimuli.”

“No, thanks. This is nice.”

He snorted. “Nice isn’t helpful.”

“Nice is nice,” she corrected. “And since _I’m_ the one who has to actually deal with the contractions and the blood and everything else, _I’ll_ decide what’s helpful.”

Matt wisely shut up.

But without his voice to distract her, her mind was left to wander. She wasn’t disciplined enough to focus it the way Matt always wanted her too, and it was even harder when she felt Penelope stirring under her ribs. Her heartrate jumped.

“Karen?” Matt blinked across at her. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” she said quickly, realizing too late that she should've tried to pass it off as surprise from feeling Penelope move.

Matt’s eyebrows pinched together in concern. “Are…are you scared?”

She tried to push back the rush of defensiveness she felt. “Aren’t _you?_ ”

“Yeah,” he said instantly.

Chagrinned at his honesty, she exhaled slowly. “I’m terrified. And also excited, and hopeful, and so curious I can’t stand it. But…definitely terrified.”

He lifted his chin. “We’ll figure it out. Together, right?”

“Like always,” she whispered. For years, they’d hardly figured _anything_ out together; that was true. But this was their new always.

 

 

Micah

He really hoped there’d come a time again when his phone would light up with a notification from Matt Murdock and Micah’s first reaction wouldn’t be panic. For now, it was just Matt asking to come over. To talk. But he rushed to explain that nothing was wrong.

Maeva had taken Ella to a therapist appointment—everyone, even _Ella_ , agreed that extra sessions were in order given all the recent events—so Micah invited Matt over instead of trying to meet somewhere. This way he could enjoy homemade coffee and leftover cookies (made under Ella’s supervision; the cookies made by Ella herself were not fit for human consumption, and certainly not fit for a human who could taste the amount of salt in the batter, which Ella insisted Matt could do) while they talked.

“How’s she doing?” Matt asked as soon as he arrived.

Micah closed the door behind him. “About as well as you’d expect, I guess. I didn’t…” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “I didn’t realize she was so attached to, ah…”

“Stone,” Matt said.

“Stone,” Micah repeated uncertainly.

“Well, that’s…that’s not his real name, actually.”

“Which is?”

“Not for me to say.”

“Understandable,” Micah acknowledged. He led the way towards the kitchen. “Ella, though. You said she’d need some of her favorite things to recover?”

“Yeah.”

“Does that mean you’ll be able to start teaching her self-defense again?”

When Matt didn’t respond, Micah looked back to see him looking stunned by the implication that self-defense with him was one of Ella’s favorite things “If she wants,” he said hesitantly.

“Good,” Micah said firmly. “I don’t think she’ll ever stop getting into trouble, so she might as well learn how to face it head-on. And now that I know firsthand how much damage you can do, I can’t imagine asking anyone else to—”

“What?” Matt interrupted.

“Oh.” Micah scratched at his jaw and didn’t elaborate.

“ _Firsthand?_ ”

“It’s all right,” Micah said quickly. “You couldn’t hear, I shouldn’t have tried to grab you like that.”

Matt blinked once, twice, apparently trying to remember past the chaos of that day, figuring out which of the blows that he’d struck during the fight was connected to Micah’s unconsciousness. “I…I…”

Micah just laughed, which seemed to shock him even more.

Matt desperately shook his head.  “I’m so—”

“Don’t worry about it, I’m fine.” To prove it, Micah dropped his hand onto Matt’s shoulder.

With visible effort, Matt did not flinch away. “I didn’t—”

“Obviously.”

“But—”

“It was my fault,” Micah insisted. “Forgot who I was dealing with for a second.”

“But—”

“But what?”

Matt huffed in frustration. “Would you just let me apologize?”

“Will it make you feel better?”

“Maybe a little,” Matt muttered.

“Fine,” Micah said. “I’ll let you apologize if you let me forgive you.”

“Of course I—”

“Really?” Micah asked skeptically.

Matt clamped his mouth shut.

Micah folded his arms across his chest and waited.

Matt sighed dramatically. “Fine. I’m so sorry for—for knocking you unconscious.”

“And I forgive you,” Micah said, then waited. Matt grimaced, but Micah knew if Matt were truly upset that he’d be either making his best argument against forgiveness or standing there in stony, expressionless silence. Victory, then. “So, what did you want to talk about?”

“Right,” Mat said, apparently eager to move on. “I asked you a while back if you’d be willing to…answer some questions. Share your experiences.”

Micah distantly remembered a conversation like that, long before Matt’s life had been so thoroughly deconstructed and reconstructed. “But you wouldn’t even tell me what the topic was.”

“Well, no.” Matt waved his hand in a vaguely awkward gesture. “I knew Karen would want to be there to tell you about…about the baby.”

The baby. _Right._ Micah cleared his throat. “I can’t exactly give you much advice on, you know, dealing with a newborn.”

“I’ll take all the advice you have on just raising a kid, if you don’t mind.”

“We’ll make a list,” Micah offered. “But I can tell you number one right now: understand that no matter how ready you think you are, you aren’t.”

Matt inclined his head. “Well, I don’t think I’m ready at all, so…”

“I mean it. There’s always going to be something you’re not prepared for. Maybe it’s the kid’s personality, or maybe something happens at their school…or maybe they become best friends with a vigilante.”

Matt ducked his head. “Yeah. Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be,” Micah said simply. “We’d rather have both of you.”

 

 

Kirsten McDuffie

Kirsten McDuffie, a prosecutor under Blake Tower, stared wide-eyed at the pile of documents spread on the conference room table. She and her partner had commandeered the room hours ago in the hopes of looking at all the evidence together at once. She’d also been secretly hoping the room would feel less claustrophobic than her tiny office. No such luck.

But she wasn’t about to complain, because unless she was mistaken…. “That’s it,” she breathed.

“What’s what?” her partner asked grumpily. He was on his fourth cup of coffee and it was definitely not working for him.

She pointed. “That’s the smoking gun! Look at this discrepancy!” She flipped between the two medical reports.

“A discrepancy isn’t a…” Her partner paused. Squinted. “Huh.”

Kirsten stared eagerly at him, willing him to understand. “Now, why would the doctor suddenly start lying about this?”

“Because she realized what the nurses were doing,” her partner breathed.

She punched the air. “Boom! We got it!”

A knock sounded at the door. “McDuffie, a word?”

She froze. That was Blake Tower’s voice. She’d recognize it anywhere.

“Go,” her partner hissed, raising and lowering his eyebrows emphatically.

“Right, yeah.” She stood up, ran a hand down her pantsuit, and swiftly tucked a few stray tendrils of hair back behind her ear.

“You look great, just go see what he wants!”

“All right, all right!” She pulled open the door and, yep, there was Mr. Tower with his crisp suit and his eyes that looked like they’d seen too much of the world.

He jerked his head and started walking. She fell into step just behind him, following him down hallways. He set a brisk pace, but they weren’t fast enough to avoid the stares of everyone they passed.

“Um,” Kirsten began.

“Wait.” He stopped in front of the elevators; his voice echoed off the steel.

Kirsten tried to keep from glancing at her reflection. That seemed unprofessional. She stared at the thin crack between the elevator doors instead.

Finally, the elevators arrived. The doors slid apart. She and Tower stepped in, and turned together to face the front. The elevator began to climb.

She was beginning to feel like she was in a movie and she’d forgotten her lines. Maybe she should comment about the weather? Or…politics? On the elevator paneling?

She was relieved when the doors opened before she could say anything stupid, although the relief faded with each step she took closer to Tower’s office. It felt like forever before Tower closed the door behind them, and it felt like another eternity when he turned around and just looked at her before saying, “I’m stepping down.”

Her jaw dropped.

Tower shrugged, adjusting some papers on his desk that did not look like they needed to be adjusted. “You might be wondering how that involves you—”

“Why?” she blurted out.

“Why, what?”

“Why would you step down? You love this job!”

His eyebrows slowly rose. “I do? I wish someone had told me that.”

“But…” She didn’t understand. He was one of the most powerful men in the city. Sure, he’d had some highly publicized losses recently, but….

“This city is changing, McDuffie. I don’t like change. It’s become clear to me that I am not the man from this job.” He glanced down at his papers. “I’ve already tendered my resignation, and I’ve been offered a job in California. I’m leaving in a month. I realize that doesn’t give you much time.”

“Time?”

He looked up and held her gaze. “To decide if you want the job in the interim before the next election. I’m going to recommend that the governor appoint you.”

She gaped at him. “Why me? I mean—I mean, thank you, of course I accept, but—”

“Think before you accept,” he warned. “This is not an easy job.”

Maybe not, but it was all she’d ever wanted. “Why me?”

His face was unreadable. “You get the job done.”

“So do a lot of prosecutors,” she argued. A voice in her head yelled at her to shut up—why was she fighting this? But it was so completely out of character. And Tower never did anything for charity.

He seemed to take a moment to study her face. Then he removed his glasses, cleaned them with a lens wipe from his pocket, and replaced them. “This county is a new battlefield. A testing ground for cases against…abnormal individuals.”

“Superheroes? Like Daredevil?”

“Vigilantes, enhanced or otherwise.”

“Vigilantism is illegal,” she pointed out.

He scoffed quietly. “Is it still?”

“And, what, you think I can throw someone like Daredevil in jail?” She was slightly disconcerted by the fact that he seemed to think she _would_ , never mind whether she _could_.

“I think,” he said slowly, “that you can find a way to…cooperate with such individuals, wherever prudent. Not to encourage them or condone their behavior, but to…to keep the city from splintering between our office and their activities. I think that your zeal for justice coupled with your empathetic nature…more empathetic than most in this office…can turn this office into something the people believe in once again.”

“They didn’t lose faith in you,” she said loyally.

He scoffed again. “Didn’t they?” He waved his hand, dismissing her rebuttal before she could make it. “You’ll be my legacy, McDuffie, if you accept the responsibility. The governor will contact you shortly.”

Wow. This was real. She felt almost dizzy.

He gave the tiniest hint at a smile. “Take the rest of the day off if you want, to make up your mind.”

She drew herself up. “Ah, no need. I have one last loose end to tie up for a case. I’ll stay.”

The smile didn’t spread, but his eyes grew warmer. “I thought you might.”

 

 

Foggy

“Hide the alcohol!” he shouted as soon as he burst into his and Marci’s apartment.

From her spot on the couch, Marci barely glanced up from her briefs as she hissed in annoyance. “No.”

“ _Minors_ are coming over, Marci! _Minors!_ ”

“Who’ve probably already stolen more alcohol than you’ve had in your entire life.”

Foggy swooped down to pick up the glass of wine setting beside the couch. “Peter Parker? Stealing alcohol? Have you met the kid?”

“No,” she reminded him.

“Oh.” That really took the wind outta the sails of his arguments. “Well,” he blustered, “you _will_.”

“Mm-hmm.” She’d already turned her eyes back to her work.

But Foggy had successfully acquired her glass. He also acquired a sip before dumping it down the drain. “Do we have anything else incriminating?”

“Mmm, I think I forgot to clean up the bloody fingerprints in the bathroom. Oh, and the decapitated corpse in the bathtub.”

“I’m ignoring you now,” Foggy informed her, sticking a knife in the dishwasher before reminding himself that Peter was underaged but not under five. He didn’t need to toddler-proof. “Where’s the board games?”

“I thought you were ignoring me.”

“Do you take actual pleasure out of obstructing me?”

She looked up, eyes lit with a fell and vicious light. “You think _that_ was obstruction?”

“Uh, no,” he said quickly, “so…no need to demonstrate to the contrary.” He stuck his head in one of their closets. “I found the board games!”

Heaving a sigh, she finally got up from the couch, making a spectacular show of packing all of her papers away before heading into the kitchen. “You really wanna impress teenagers, Foggy Bear? Leave the board games and make snacks.”

Foggy tried to stuff the Monopoly box back in the closet. It didn’t fit. “You’re a genius.”

“I know. Careful with that, by the way,” she called without looking over her shoulder.

Foggy realized too late that he’d wedged the Monopoly box too far under a different box, a different box that was apparently solely responsible for maintaining the structural integrity of the stack of games, because the entire thing fell on his head. From the kitchen, he heard Marci’s gleeful laughter just as the first knock sounded on the door. Stupendous.

Five seconds later, teenagers were spilling into the apartment. Peter, Ned, and Michelle. It was just three of them, but it kinda felt like an army, especially when Peter hopped up onto the counter and crouched there like a baby gargoyle.

“Thanks for having us, Mr. Nelson!” he chirped. “Is Matt coming?”

Foggy shoved the games back into the closet and managed to push the door closed. “Yeah, he’s on his way.”

The first Friends-of-Superheroes Support Meeting was about to commence.

 

 

The next day, Foggy, Matt, and Karen closed up the office at the end of work. Karen had coaxed them back into their we-love-each-other meeting, and it left Foggy with a feeling that was weirdly warm and squishy in his chest as he locked the place up.

“Josie’s?” Matt suggested.

Karen couldn’t drink alcohol, but she had found one single non-alcoholic drink at Josie’s that she actually liked, so they agreed. But as she raised her hand to hail a cab, Matt suddenly stopped dead. Speaking of dead, he was just as pale. Foggy was about to ask _what d’you hear, boy?_ but his phone chirped. News alert.

Karen slid her hand up to his shoulder. “Matt?”

Matt’s throat spasmed as he swallowed.

There was a sinking feeling in Foggy’s gut as he pulled out his phone. Maybe the timing was a coincidence, but maybe not, because Foggy had three news alerts set up on his phone: one for all things related to Captain America, and one for Daredevil, and one for Wilson Fisk.

He opened his phone to a headline.

_WILSON FISK MURDERED IN PRISON._

Karen pressed as close as she could to read over his shoulder. “What…?”

Foggy scanned the first paragraph. _Guards found Wilson Fisk dead in his cell with a note safety-pinned to his chest. Preliminary reports suggest that the cause of death was an overdose of the drug known as devil’s hell, a drug manufactured and distributed by Fisk’s late wife Vanessa. Police are still investigating to determine not only who broke into Fisk’s cell, but how. The silent assassin left no trace other than a single note: “Matt Murdock, take notice.” Matt Murdock, the blind lawyer who helped put Fisk in prison, also recently revealed that he has violently opposed Fisk as the vigilante Daredevil. Though Murdock is not currently under investigation according to the NYPD, a spokesman cautioned the public that the NYPD is not yet ruling anyone out as a suspect._

Foggy tore his eyes away from the screen. Matt looked like he was about to throw up. “Hey. Hey, buddy…”

Karen was already fighting to unlock the office door. She jerked it open, and the three of them all stumbled back inside. Matt’s glasses were so fogged over that it was impossible to see his eyes, but Foggy could tell from the sharp angle of his head that Matt was listening to something far away.

Foggy snapped his fingers in front of his friend’s face. “Hey! Matt!”

Matt’s head stabilized. “What?” he gasped.

“It’s okay. We’re okay. Right?” he added, because maybe they weren’t. If Fisk was really dead, no assumption seemed safe. “Right? Is someone coming?”

Matt paused for two heart-stopping seconds. Then he shook his head. “We’re…we’re good. Here. I think.” He wet his lips and swallowed.

Karen made a quiet sound and her eyes met Foggy’s. There was concern there, but also relief. Karen gave a small nod, telling Foggy she was okay. Foggy nodded in return. The both turned as one towards Matt, who must’ve sensed enough of their silent communication to realize their attention had shifted to him.

He took a step back and deliberately took off his glasses. “I didn’t do this.”

Foggy didn’t need heartbeats or even a glimpse into his best friend’s eyes to know he was telling the truth. “I believe you.”

“I’m sorry,” Matt went on, nonsensical in light of his previous statement. “I swear, I never wanted…” He trailed off.

Because he _had_ wanted. And they all knew it. Foggy remembered standing across from him in his living room, watching Matt fiddle with the fabric of his blanket like a little kid as he confessed to attempted murder. To say nothing of watching Matt storm out of the gym after hearing the news about Ray Nadeem’s death.

“I didn’t do this,” Matt insisted. “I didn’t—I didn’t ask for this.”

Foggy let himself feel disturbed for ten more seconds before firmly reminding himself that this wasn’t about him. _He_ hadn’t gotten Wilson Fisk’s dead body giftwrapped with a bow and tagged with his name. He reached out, put his hand on Matt’s forearm. “I know, buddy.”

“I didn’t want this,” Matt repeated in a whisper, like he was reassuring himself.

Maybe he was.

“We know,” Karen said. Then she bit her lip.

Foggy hesitated. “I mean…” He faltered. “I didn’t want this either. But…I’m not gonna say it doesn’t make things easier.”

Matt’s head snapped up, eyes wide and searching. “You mean that?”

The thing was, Foggy could think of a few other deaths he’d secretly celebrated. Like a husband of one of their clients who got himself stabbed. He’d been abusing her, but she’d insisted on staying for the kids. When he was gone, and she was free, Foggy treated himself to an extra few shots at Josie’s and didn’t tell anyone why. Barely admitted the reason to himself.

Definitely hadn’t said anything to Matt. Hadn’t wanted to…what, trigger him? Foggy told himself he hadn’t wanted Matt to feel guilty (because of course Matt would find a way to feel guilty over a death that’d had absolutely nothing to do with him) but maybe it was just that he hadn’t wanted to set Matt off.

Which made it Foggy’s turn to feel guilty. For underestimating him, for assuming the worst.

Matt was still waiting for an answer, eyes full of an emotion Foggy couldn’t quite read, but he was holding himself tensely.

Foggy cleared his throat. “Yeah, buddy. I mean it.”

 

 

Matt

The relief he felt at Foggy’s words offered a tiny oasis of respite, but it wasn’t enough. Not standing there with his back to the door, with both Foggy and Karen staring at him like they were trying to double-check that he hadn’t finally tripped over the line into insanity. Or something darker.

“Can I—I’m gonna go.”

Karen edged closer. “Where?”

“Just—I don’t know. Somewhere.” He needed space to breathe. To think. He blurted out the first place that popped into his head: “The cemetery.”

That was…that was definitely not the thing he should’ve said.

Karen and Foggy’s hearts started jackhammering. But Foggy’s voice was blessedly level when he said, “Why?”

It’d been something in the back of his mind for a while now, but the need to deal with it hadn’t been urgent. Until now that he needed to focus on one tragedy at a time. ( _Was_ this a tragedy?) “I just…I need to go say goodbye. Or something.”

Karen reached out and touched his arm. “Tell me one thing first. Do you…do you think it’s your fault? What happened to…to Stone?”

His answer would disappoint her, so he shrugged.

“I’m not asking whether you _feel_ like it’s your fault. Do you _think_ it’s your fault?”

That…that actually made a difference. He frowned. “No?” At her noise of encouragement, he risked shaking his head. “No. Stone…it was Stone’s decision.” And Matt didn’t want to take that from him.

“Good,” she murmured, putting her hands on his neck and pulling him down around the expanse her stomach so she could kiss him. “Okay. Go say goodbye.”

 

 

The cemetery was cold, but it was otherwise almost pleasant. The sounds of the city were muffled by trees, and the air was clearer here. And there was something about the place that felt oddly religious. Maybe that was a bad thing, associating religion with death this way.

But that was what death _did_ , wasn’t it? It slowed the world down. Made people stop and think about what mattered, about whether their lives were adding up or whether they’d need mercy. Whether their lives had any eternal significance.

Whether God would be disappointed in Matt, or whether He’d smile at the thought of him like Matt did when he thought of Penelope Grace.

As he walked up the hill, he couldn’t keep his thoughts from straying to Fisk. It wasn’t as if he’d ever actually expected Fisk to change. Find redemption. Turn his back on all his sins. But now the possibility was _gone_ , wiped out, and that was…that was different.

Still. It was a relief. Yeah, Matt found someone else’s death to be a _relief_. Closing his eyes, he clung to the memory of Foggy’s steady heartbeat when he admitted he thought things would be easier now.

It was okay. Being relieved that Fisk was dead didn’t make Matt a murderer.

The fact that Fisk had been killed _for_ Matt didn’t make Matt a murderer.

It was just that: a fact, with no moral judgment.

He reached the crest of the hill and turned towards Elektra’s headstone. He thought of the little rock he’d placed beside it to represent Stick. It still seemed like a pathetic monument to so great a warrior. It also seemed too easy to overlook for the man who’d had such an influence over almost every area of Matt’s life.

Matt shook his head at himself. He’d already said goodbye to Stick. He didn’t need to do it again.

Stone, though. Stone deserved a goodbye that was definitely far better than anything Matt could manage. But he had to at least try.

He cleared his throat. “Hey, Stone. I, uh, I just wanted to say…well, I have a lot to say, really.” All the things he should’ve said before it was too late. How stupid that it was easier to say to a plot of empty earth. “I just…I’m glad you showed up. From the beginning, you were trying to help me in your own way, and…and looking back, it’s ridiculous to think…we’d ever get this far. But we did, so.” He took a deep breath. “Thank you for everything you taught me. I mean, the knives and swords are really great. And, uh…thank you for letting me help you, because I think that helped me too. Thank you for having my back for so long. And for protecting the people I love. And—and—and for—” His throat tightened. He pushed on. “For knowing what it’s _like_.” With racing through the streets at night. With loving the feeling of defeating an enemy. With Stick.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you safe from Dex.” That wasn’t all he had to apologize for, though, was it? “I’m sorry I didn’t help you with Dex. You were…you were trying to do a good thing, and I just…” He squeezed his eyes shut, shame clawing in his chest. “I was scared. Or what it might cost. And it just…it’s not fair that you were the one who had to pay it, and I’m sorry I couldn’t find you. I _looked_ , but I couldn’t…” He bit down hard on his trembling lip. “I’m sorry.”

His eyes were stinging. Matt adjusted his glasses, which he could feel fogging up with condensation. With _emotion_.

Stick would not approve of an emotional goodbye. But that was the thing. Stone was no longer just someone else that Stick had taught. And Matt decided right then that Stick didn’t get to have any say over how Matt said goodbye to Stone.

Kneeling next to the tombstone, Matt pulled off his glasses, folded them up, and tucked them into his breast pocket. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. Maybe if I’d…” If he’d been paying more attention, or if he’d trained harder, or if he’d just lasted longer with Stick. “Maybe I could have saved you. But I didn’t. I’m sorry.” He wet his lips, feeling a single tear run down his cheek. “It’s just that you had a lot left to do, Stone.”

He’d grown so much. Shifting his worldview away from Stick’s perspective, gaining actual friends. Putting other people first for no reason other than that he _could_. “You weren’t just an ally, you know,” Matt said quietly. “You were a friend. Uh…a brother. So, just…thank you.”

Another tear. Matt didn’t bother to wipe it away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kirsten McDuffie is from the comments and I LOVE her, she's PERFECT, she NEEDS to be in some live-action adaptation asap!

**Author's Note:**

> Fic title from "You Are My Strength" by A Rotterdam November. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiaTRvVX-Og)


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